05 November 2009 | Uncategorized | Miller Heiman

Fact-based decisions are necessary to drive results in today’s challenging economy – especially when you’re already working with limited resources. So having the most current research can truly go a long way in helping you make smart, strategic and precise decisions that will impact sales results.

We invite you to participate in our seventh annual Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study. You will join more than 21,000 professionals who comprise the largest global study ever produced on sales performance best practices. Survey participants are among the first to receive the study results which reveal the selling activities that are helping companies around the world achieve the greatest results.

By participating in the survey, you will also receive:

• Immediate access to our 2009 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study executive summary
• Complimentary access to the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study executive summary, including comparisons to previous years’ results, upon publication in Q1 2010
• An invitation to a full de-briefing of the study results and its implications for high sales performance

To launch the survey, click here.

photo credit: Elessar

No Comments

10 June 2009 | Uncategorized | brian

Miller Heiman just recently released their 2009 Sales Growth Strategies for Australia and New Zealand. Like the general 2009 Best Practices Survey, this new report focuses on the actions and attitudes of the best performing, world-class sales organizations. The focus on Australia and New Zealand has allowed Miller Heiman to fine-tune the process and focus on areas that stand out for organizations in those countries.

Among the differences discovered in the survey is a reluctance to embrace technology as part of the sales process. While 82% of World-Class Sales Organizations felt that their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system greatly improved the effectiveness of their sales teams, only 20% of Australian respondents felt the same way. Part of this may have to do with a general lack of formalized planning and structured procedures. The survey found that only 19% of Australian respondents reported that they use comprehensive prospecting plans when targeting and engaging with a new prospect. Among World-Class Sales Organizations, this number is 70%.

According to Michael Light, regional vice president for Asia Pacific, Australian organisations have typically left prospecting and targeting efforts to the individual salespeople to do their own way. “That means sales managers do not really have good visibility into who their salespeople are targeting and what their salespeople are saying to prospects,” Light said. “This may not have mattered much when business was easier, but in today’s tough economic times, sales management needs to have strong, transparent prospecting plans.”

Where Australian sales organizations excel is in avoiding deep discounts. Only 7% of Australian sales organizations agreed with the statement, “on a regular basis, we much significantly discount in order to win,” as compared to 17% over all and 12% of the World-Class Sales Organizations. According to Light, salespeople in Australia are naturally reluctant to discount, unlike other cultures where it is endemic. “The implication of not discounting is that the value has been well demonstrated,” said Light.

Photo credits: Strange Ones, Robyn Gallagher.

1 Comment

19 May 2009 | Uncategorized | brian

Frequently, managers and executives will purchase training for a sales team. Sometimes it’s purchased for the top performers, sometimes it’s for the members who are struggling. Too often, it’s wasted money.

Assuming the sales training wasn’t simply a pep-rally with delusions of adequacy, training participants probably learned techniques to help them improve their game in a number of different areas. Unfortunately, the best techniques don’t work in isolation. The concepts learned require disciplined and consistent application, generally across the entire team and sometimes through to other parts of the organization outside of sales. Without full deployment from management, requiring actual implementation and not just tacit support, most of the best strategies and tactics simply won’t produce measureable results. Even worse, if there’s confusion or disagreement on how the techniques learned should be implemented, performance could actually suffer.

According to the 2009 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practice Study, 89% of the sales organizations identified as World Class reported that they consistently follow a standardized process to qualify opportunities, as opposed to only 37% overall. Sales isn’t smoke-and-mirrors, or wishing things into being. Success grows from reproducible, sensible strategies performed with diligence and a clear eye towards the shifting economic landscape. This sort of thing needs to come down from the executive level, with oversight and reinforcement.

Solid training properly reinforced and consistently executed, however, is absolutely worth the expense and time it demands. According to a 2006 Sales Benchmark Index report analyzing sales management expenditures, turnover in sales came in at just under 40% across industries. The cost of this turnover was estimated at $200,000 per salesperson. Among the top three causes for turnover were “insufficient training of new hires” and “lack of support from direct supervisor.”

Sales is like any other skill. It can be learned and it can be practiced. Proper sales performance leads to predictable, reproducible results. These results don’t come from an afternoon’s lecture, but a consistent, concerted effort across an entire organization to support and promote the sales that are the lifeblood of the company.

Photo credit: striatic

3 Comments

19 April 2009 | Uncategorized | brian

“Setting a goal is not the main thing,” observed Tom Landry, the coach who led the Dallas Cowboys through 20 consecutive winning seasons. “It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” Making the plan and staying with it are two different things. It’s possible to create a plan in isolation, but its impossible to lead your team, whether it be a football team or a sales team, towards the goal without getting down in the mud and the blood with them. Business coaching, first and foremost, is about your people. It’s about giving them the tools they need to do their individual parts so the goals of the team can be achieved.

Know Your Team
Before you can even make a plan, you need to know what you’re working with. You need to know the members of your team, especially what makes them successful and what holds them back. In a recent survey of sales organizations, In the 2009 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, we found that among the World Class Sales Organizations, 98% understood why their top performers were successful as opposed to only 38% across all the organizations surveyed. There may be no more telling metric than this when it comes to knowing which sales teams will meet or exceed their goals and which won’t.

Review the Last Game
It’s not always pleasant to review benchmarking with your team, but it’s vital to improvement. As their coach, you need to follow through with every member of your team to insure that they are doing what your top performers have taught you are the keys to success. “Top performers are not born,” says Sam Reese, president and CEO of Miller Heiman. “In fact, they can be replicated to a great extent.” Among the most successful of the sales organizations surveyed, 85% reported that their performance review process helps improve their sales force’s job performance. Barely more than a quarter, 28%, of all sales organizations surveyed could say the same thing.

Drilling for Discipline
91% of the best performing sales organizations surveyed said that they leveraged the best practices of their top performers to improve everyone else. This requires discipline and preparedness on the part of your team. They need to exercise these best practices when stressed or away from the office. Natural talent might be enough to get the ball moving, but it’s discipline that scores the points. When asked what the single most important quality in a top performer is, the top performers gave almost equal weight to being disciplined and prepared as they did to being able to access and influence senior-level executives.

Walking the Walk
Reviewing your own performance as a coach is also important. You need to know that you’re getting the job done. This may be harder than it seems. When asked if they were leveraging the best practices of their top performers, 42% of C-level responded in the affirmative. However, only 23% of those on sales teams saw it happening. If you’re going through the motions, but the lessons aren’t being learned, you need to change your methods. Talk to your team, and make sure they’re really getting all the tools they need, and not just what you think they need. Above all, coaching is about serving your team so they can perform beyond what they believe is possible.

More Information
If you are interested in learning more ways to help your team, be sure to take a look at the Miller Heiman Sales Makeover.

Photo credit: nightthree

9 Comments