Greg Bennett’s 15 Core Strategies
for Creating the Ultimate Sales Organization
v Pipeline Power:
“The Sales Pipeline must be made of glass, not metal”. Transparent pipelines enable managers to track activity and process as opposed to simply waiting for the outcome.
o “Client activity alone must be used for sales forecasting “. Stop the process of salespeople guessing the closing percentage of an opportunity, leading to the “Mutual Mystification” process.
o “Performance standards must be established based on activity and outcomes”. Instead of only setting outcome-based objectives, managers must set activity expectations in order to create more assured outcomes.
o “Track activity not JUST outcomes”. Salespeople need to understand what activity is required, not just the final number they’re expected to hit.
o “Monitor important steps that can’t be fudged”. Managers must track items further down in the process and are less likely to be made up, e.g. qualified proposals.
o “Franchise success”. Management must approach sales success from a franchiser’s mindset and create strategies for success that must be followed.
v The Magic of Mini-Step Closing:
“All steps in the sales process need to be identified”. Instead of the sales process only having 2 steps – enter pipeline…exit pipeline, we must document every MINI-step in between and after.
o “Mini-steps require action”. The action can come from the client, the salesperson, the sales manager, or a 3rd party, but they must always require an action step.
o “Sales forecasts, or percentage of close, must be tied to mini-steps”. Instead of allowing salespeople to guess as to the percentage of close, the percentage of close will now be tied to the action-oriented mini-steps.
o “Follow-up after should also be broken down into mini-steps”. Instead of leaving good service to chance, organizations must standardize excellence through mini-steps once the sale is done.
v Embracing NO:
“The concept of MAYBE needs to be removed from the dialogue between seller and client, and then seller and management”. The potential outcomes of a sale must be narrowed down to YES or NO.
o “Closing must be redefined as “closure” and will include NO, not just YES”. We must focus on closing on a decision as the most important thing. We’ve conditioned people to believe that only YES means something is closed.
o “NO must be held up as a respectful answer that is just below YES, but far, far better than MAYBE”. Sales managers must drill home the fact that sales can be turned from NO to YES much easier than from MAYBE to YES.
o “Salespeople will hold clients accountable to the direct degree managers hold salespeople accountable”. Management must do more critical post-sales debriefings – if a manager accepts “maybe”, a seller will accept “maybe”.
o “Get excited only about action…not spin”. Management must refrain from getting excited with salespeople who spin great stories about what could be, and only excited about the action-oriented mini-steps.
