There are those old sayings about great salespeople “he/she could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo” or “a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves.” A compliment to anyone who is on the receiving end.
The reality is that even if you have the best salesperson on the planet if your product offering is not something the client needs, wants or positioned the right way, the Superstar may succeed but it doesn’t mean other salespeople in the organization will.
Those in leadership roles can often miss this underlying truth. The reality is that if only your best salesperson can sell your product and the rest can’t, then the issue might be from your product, the sales process, or the positioning.
A way you know if this is the case is when the sales process is reliant on the individual and not the group. If you can build a structured and repeatable sales process where even your lower performing salespeople are still able to sell, that’s when you know you are on the right track.
It’s much easier to adjust the product offering around the sales process than it is to find a Sales Superstar.
Once you reach the milestone of a predictable sales process, you can now start improving the performance of the sales team. There is no doubt your top salesperson will still be doing great, but now you have the opportunity to focus on bringing the others up, or if needed, find new sales talent.
I’ve seen many a Company who thought they the issue was that they had poor salespeople but later found out that the problem was systemic in the product or positioning. Once they fixed the systemic issues, the sales started taking care of themselves. The best part is when you get to that stage, managing the sales team becomes fun.
Author: Bryan Payne the Chief Talent Scout and Partner at Just Sales Jobs. With over 25-years experience in sales and leading high-performance sales teams. You can reach him at bp@justsalesjobs.ca