Leading Growth

10Effectiveness

FOR A NUMBER of years, I've been imploring sales leaders to make sales effectiveness their number-one initiative, especially at the start of the year. The greater your force's effectiveness, the greater your growth. You may be able to buy some of the talent you need, but the rest you'll need to build. The mistake that most sales leaders make is accepting their sales force's current effectiveness level, never prioritizing the initiatives that would increase their ability to both create and win the new opportunities necessary to grow their revenue. Here we need to add another formula for growth:

Imagine you have ten salespeople on your team. What impact would it have on your revenue to lose your top two producers? I'm sure it would be a challenge to make up for their contributions. One approach to that challenge is to add two new stars to your team who can be as effective as the two you lost. While I don't oppose that strategy, it's not the only one. Instead, improving your results means improving the effectiveness of each individual on your team. This maximizes your results by ensuring you get everything you can out of every person on your team.

The Technology Trap

I have seen far too many sales leaders turn to technology to improve the sales force's “efficiency,” building large, expensive sales stacks made up of software their sales team doesn't use. One ...