The Perfect Salesforce – The Six Best Practices of the Worlds Best Sales Teams

The Perfect Salesforce – The Six Best Practices of the Worlds Best Sales Teams
By Derek Gatehouse
review by vmsteveo

Great! Another book about selling I thought to myself as I finished up the forward section of the book. More formulas, advice, stories etc. But as I cruised through the first few chapters, I found that this book was not about selling advice but more of applying selling advice to build a selling engine... interesting angle and exactly the thought provoking material we look for.

Gatehouse takes a contrarian view with sales training and processes to enable salespeople to become more effective. He found that finding and growing a sales force is more of a people issue than a process or methodology issue. He explains that methodologies are inflexible for the average sales person to track and keep score. But if you want the top performers to be attracted to your organization, focus on the people, not the process.

In the Perfect Sales Force, Gatehouse explains in detail the six best practices for building the perfect salespeople to fit your environment. The first three are specifically based on hiring pointers and the remaining three are best practice sections which explain the management involved once you create the team.

The typical specifications for the perfect sales people are as follows:

1. Self starter
2. Strong Communication Skills
3. Team Player
4. Highly Motivated

Do these look familiar? That’s because these are typical and can fit for any job description with any title. Gatehouse displaces the generic traits and deep dives into a framework of 10 selling talents. Out of the ten, six are constant and never changing and the remaining four depend on the sales situation and type, more to come to explain…

The Perfect Sales Force formula is a culmination of understanding the following traits:

1. Natural talent or ability
2. Training as a performance enhancement
3. External variables or conditions that effect performance

The formula includes the following “true” performance influencers that if the right conditions are created, can allow your salespeople to flourish. The author parallels this with the right environment for seeds to grow and flourish. They are:

1. Compensation plan – Good soil
2. Quota – Water
3. Sales training – Air
4. Immediate management - Sunlight

So on to the six best practices which take up the remaining sections of the book:

#1 Understanding of the ten selling talents

1. Work ethic – Quality vs. quantity
2. Tolerance – High vs. low
3. Persuasion – Adviser vs. pleaser
4. Executive rapport – High vs. low
5. Need – Create vs. established
6. Explanation – obvious vs. concept

Preferences

7. Sales cycle – Long vs. short
8. The solution – Unique vs. commodity
9. Products – Many vs. few
10.Decision makers – Many vs. few

Always needed

1. Good speaker
2. Good listener

#2 Sorting Sales Stages for Talent

Within this best practice the author asks the question, have you ever had an outstanding salesperson that was a horrible prospector? Have you ever had a great prospector that generated lots of leads but could never seem to close them? How about your top producers who are always late with their weekly reports, hate paperwork, etc? Sound familiar?

Sorting the sales stages enables you to understand the requirements of both new and existing clients and the necessary talents needed for both. Most of the time you will find top performers are only the top in one to two of the total sales stages.

#3 Talents Based Hiring Process

This is a two step approach in which the first step encourages to specifically and exactly know which talents are needed to sell specific to your organization. This would be based upon your market, its sales cycle, and what you sell.

Step two is the questioning, analysis, and probing you do to fully understand the talent of the candidate.

Structure your questions around the talent needed and listen for common patterns of behavior. It is imperative that the candidate is not made aware of the talent needed as this would sku the results. Sample questions are provided within this section.

#4 The Pay Plan & Quota

Two lessons here…

1. Provide clear parameters
2. Treat them right

Part 1 - Quota
Quota is defined as the results that a properly cast individual can regularly accomplish with reasonable effort. Let’s break this down a bit more:

“results” meaning monetary or non-monetary
“properly cast individual” meaning the right person for the job
“regularly” meaning vibrancy of quota attainment
“with reasonable effort” meaning that with extra effort the salesperson will surpass quota

Some sales managers believe that quota is a positive motivator, however

1. Quota is more often perceived as negative
2. Based annually which is way too long of a time frame
3. If there is a bonus attached to the new annual quota, reaching the goal becomes increasing uncertain since quota is raised to a new level becoming less attainable each year.

Part 2 - Pay Plan
Keep it positive, immediate and certain (PIC). When developing a pay plan Gatehouse urges you to begin with the most positive pay plan you can offer your salespeople and then make it fit within management. Components of the pay plan are as follows:

1. Base salary – not a performance influencer
2. Commission – performance influencer in which the author believes that every position should have a commission component
3. Short Term Incentives – spot bonus or additional compensation within 90 days

The author gives examples of sliding scale pay plans that fit his PIC model.

#5 Sales Behavior Training

Sales training seems to have the least impact on overall performance however to improve sales training effectiveness implement these three best practices:

1. Building of rapport – Mirroring and bonding with different personality types based upon salespersons talents/expertise.

2. Discussion of the solution – Describes how you sell and the best way to do it. For this type of training the author highly recommends SPIN selling.

3. The advising process – The authors contradictory findings for this portion of sales training is that customers do not want to be asked what to do but rather be told what to do.

Sales Training Delivery Parameters:

1. Classroom – Listen and learn
2. Role play – Do, practice
3. Field training – The missing link as the author puts it. Have the trainer accompany the salesperson on a call to help bring the trainee through the process

#6 Results Based Management

“The manager’s primary job is to get those in her charge to produce results.” Even though the right pay plans, training, sales type, etc from the previous 5 disciplines have all been implemented, there is still a significant need to address the human side of your team, hence the sales manager. The sales team still needs encouragement, guidance, feedback, arbitration, praise, reprimands, and support. The right sales managers with maintain equilibrium.

So who do we select as the best managers? The best sales managers are pare salesperson, part disciplinarian, part friend, part boss, part trainer, part mentor, and part psychologist. They are at once a respected colleague and a down to earth member of the group. Listed are sales manager qualities:

1. Empathy
2. Diplomacy
3. Leadership
4. Amiableness
5. Humility (lack of ego)
6. Fearlessness

The sales manager’s critical daily activities:

1. Enforce results, manage activities
2. Develop strengths, not weaknesses

Summary

The author summarizes by saying “if you have invested the effort and indeed built a high performance vehicle – an autonomous growth machine – then let it run”. The last sections of the book contain a great case study, worksheets, and a helpful website you can access additional information (www.theperfectsalesforce.com) you can use to help build your perfect sales force.

So what’s your #1 strategy for building the ultimate sales force? I would enjoy hearing your comments.

See you in the trenches - vmsteveo