Sales Systems

I read an excellent book this week from one of the sales gurus in the industry. The book is called: The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies, by Chet Holmes. I have primarily been studying books on sales skills. This book, however, focuses on sales systems. It was an eye opener for me. This could have really improved my sales firm last summer. At first this book did not seem relevant to what I am doing for my capstone until I dug a little deeper. Here I will briefly go through the a few of the main ideas in this book and explain how it applies to my capstone project.

1. Time management for sales managers and sales systems.

Mathematically, there are really only two general ways to increase sales volume: (i) Increase the rate at which people buy (as a percentage of those you approach and to whom you sell) and (ii) increase the total of number of potential customers to whom you give sales presentations.

If only 1 out of every 10 presentations yields a sale, you have a lot of room to grow in terms of success rates, but measuring how to improve sales skills isn't easy, and if you are only giving one sales presentation a day, then the fastest way to double your sales is to give two sales presentations a day instead of trying to double the skills.

This chapter of Chet's book focuses on how you can cut time as a manager and in your system to increase the volume of people to whom you sell.

2. Regular and effective training. One of the most important aspects of an effective sales training program is repetition. Most programs give you a lot of information all at once and people walk away feeling good but with few lasting new skills. Effective sales trainings need to be repeated. In fact it is much better to teach 3 or 4 new skills again and again and again, instead of teaching 15 new stills once. In these trainings you should do mandatory role plays so that you can ensure that all of your sales reps are getting the skills down. You need to have consistency with your reps so that you can know that all of your customers are getting the same experience. This makes it much easier to measure your sales teams skills when there is consistency among your reps.

3. Strategy

This part talked about putting educational seminars together so that you can give what Chet Holmes calls, "Stadium Pitches" which are well prepared and in front of lots of potential buyers at one time. Buy giving people a genuine educational seminar that addresses certain issues you can then show how your company can help them overcome those concerns. A popular seminar title could be called, "The 5 most dangerous trends facing (doctors, lawyers, retailers, banks, etc.) today." This hooks people in, because they want to know that is going on that is a dangerous in their industry, and if you can give some really good information you can really build trust with people.

4. The best buyers

Decide who your best buyers are and target them directly. Build lists and stay away from random cold calling.

5. Hiring Superstars

What I love most about this part was how it suggested that during an interview with a potential sales rep the first thing you do is reject them and see what they do. Most people say okay and walk away, but your potential superstars will overcome your objections, and this what you are looking for.