Friday Funnel Focus by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions
Looking for a silver bullet to your flat or declining sales?
One reason small business owners struggle with flat or declining sales is the lack of their first SUCCESSFUL salesperson. Earlier last month, we covered the importance of selecting the right sales role or roles for your business and putting the right person in those roles.
What about your existing situation you ask, how do I make things better NOW with my current salespeople?
Let’s start with David Sandler’s “Success Triangle” also known as the B-A-T Triangle. Sandler starts with 3 primary elements: Behavior, Attitude and Technique.
He further breaks down each of those into their individual triangles. For example Attitude is a triangle for your attitude toward your market, your company and yourself. Here is the Attitude triangle.
He also breaks the individual Behavior, Attitude and Technique triangles down another level. For example, there is an Action triangle that is part of the Behavior Triangle and he breaks the Action triangle down into Guts, Discipline and Vitality. Here is the Action Triangle.
He also breaks the “You” triangle down into Mind, Body and Spirit.
So, why did I focus on elements of the Behavior and Attitude Triangles as opposed to Technique Triangle?
My experience has shown that work on the Technique triangle provides incremental improvement, provided there is a process for ongoing reinforcement. However, work done on the Behavior and Attitude triangles can provide a much larger step function improvement in the near term.
How many struggling sales people struggle with issues related to mindset and/or “time management”?
In working with clients’ sales people, my experience shows that over 80% of struggling sales people struggle in those two areas: time management and mindset. There are other issues too, but it frequently seems to start there.
How can we help salespeople improve their behavior and attitude?
It starts with identifying the issues as well as measuring and tracking the progress. In the picture below, are the pages for me to journal at the end of the day, 9/1/2023.
- In the upper right you see my listing of abbreviations for Behavior,Guts, Discipline and Vitality in the first column. Next is Attitude, Mind, Body, Spirit and Tribe ( I added this courtesy of Dennis Volpe). Far Right is Technique. Each day I assess each element from 1-10, no 7’s allowed. 7 is too safe.
- The left hand side helps me review key aspects of my day. It helps me celebrate my wins, acknowledge my gratitude and point out areas below where I want to focus my improvement.
You can also see that I have included the title to the episode of a podcast that I will listen to on Friday and take notes. At the beginning of Q3, I set a goal to get more done while cutting my work hours by 20%. To do this, I knew I would need to look at doing things differently. I decided to commit to Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus System and set a habit goal to listen to an episode a day, starting with Episode 1 of the “Focus On This” Podcast that his company produces. As I write this blog for this coming Friday, I have consumed 60 podcast episodes, taken the Full Focus Goal Setting course and read/listened to 3 of his books (Living Forward, Your Best Year Ever and Free to Focus.) I believe that Michael Hyatt’s content is as good as any to help one work on Behavior and Attitude issues. I recommend you check it out yourself and consider pointing your salespeople in the same direction.
Coupling Michael Hyatt’s programs with our Make Your Business … Sales Team Ready Program can be “rocket fuel” for making your sales team better.
We encourage the salesperson to own their behavior and attitude development and chart their daily progress, such as the journal solution above. But it does not stop there. The sales manager can use the weekly sales coaching sessions to review progress and coach them to success.
For maximum effectiveness, ensure that your Sales Strategy is aligned from top to bottom.
Check out Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana’s book, “Cracking the Sales Management Code” for more details and/or continue following this blog and our Company LinkedIn page.
Business Owners/Sales Managers, be sure to hold your salespeople accountable. Here is a sample coaching guide for the sales manager, or business owner acting as sales manager to use. Improved behaviors and attitude should provide an immediate boost. Couple that with sustained, ongoing sales coaching and you just might have that SUCCESSFUL salesperson you were looking for. If not, it is time to relook at your process on how to Grow the Right Salesperson on Your Team in the Right Sales Role. Don’t hang on to underperformers. You can’t afford it.
Not that there is a silver bullet to flat or declining sales, but improved behaviors and attitude/mindset adjustments can be a huge step forward. ( For more information on attitude/mindset adjustments, see last week’s blog on “How to help your salespeople turn limiting beliefs into liberating truths.”)
At EPOCH Sales Management Solutions, we help you scale your team from yourself to as many salespeople as you want, be it 1,2, 5 or more.
Want the Friday Funnel Focus Blog sent directly to you each Friday?
We help small business owners scale their teams from themselves to 5 salespeople and beyond.
Schedule today a DISCOVERY consultation with Dave Priddy!
Do you struggle to find the right salesperson?
You may not even know what is it that you want in a SUCCESSFUL salesperson.
If you struggle with this...
Download the DESIRED Salesperson Traits List!