by Jim Keenan
Republished from Forbes, February 21, 2017
If you believe the research, only 55% of salespeople make quota. That means 45% of sales people don’t make their quota, and the reason is we’re flying blind. For years sales organizations have had to use quantitative metrics to determine if a sales person was effective. We’ve measured the number of calls, the number of touches, meetings set, closing percentages, average deal size, emails sent, conversion rates, quota attainment and more, to ascertain a salesperson effectiveness.
Metrics represent the science of sales. They are the quantitative element of selling. Make more calls, sell more stuff. Improve your close rates, close more deals. Set more meetings, get closer to quota. The formula has almost always been quantitative, we’ve relied on the science, but it hasn’t been enough, clearly.
Over the years, we continue to put quantitative metrics under the microscope, we’ve looked to get more and more data to help us sell more and get more out of our sales team. The problem is, quantitative data only goes so far. Like the old adage says, sales is a science and an art, and until now it’s been almost impossible to address the art piece.
The art in sales happens in the conversations. It’s how we engage with prospects and buyers. The art comes in how we respond to objections. The art is the tone we use. The art is our unscripted responses to unexpected insights and customer responses. The art is the part of sales we’ve had trouble seeing– until now.
Back in the day, there was something called the ride-along. The ride-along was when a sales manager would drive with his or her salesperson for the day. The sales manager would spend the day on the road going from appointment to appointment with the rep, listening and watching how their sales person sold and how they conducted their meetings. It was a killer way for sales managers to evaluate and observe how their sales people sold. Mike Weinberg talks about this in his great book, New Sales Simplified.
The ride-along was the one place that provided sales organizations and sale managers visibility into the how their sales people sold. Not the result of their efforts, like quota or number of calls, etc. but what they did on the calls, how they carried themselves, how the positioned the products and more.
Not all sales managers did ridealongs, but those who did garnered a wealth of knowledge.
Unfortunately, outside sales reps are a dying breed. Who still goes on customers site sales calls anymore? Therefore ridealongs are a dying methodology. (Yeah, yeah, I know some of you still do, but it’s becoming an increasingly smaller number every year).
What’s a sales manager or sales leader to do? How do we get visibility into what our salespeople are doing or saying if the ride-along is no longer an option? How do we know how they give a demo? How do we know how they overcome objections? How do we know how they position the value proposition? How do we know how they do a discovery call? How do we know how they position us against the competition? How do we know how they negotiate on price? How do we know how they do anything they do, now that drive-a-longs are a thing of the past?
How?
Call recording that’s how. I don’t mean call recording like we get when we call customer service line, I mean coaching based call recording.
We’ve seen an explosion of new sales tools, methodologies, structures, strategies and more over the past 20 years. However, I’m going on record as saying, coaching and call recording will have the biggest impact on sales organizations revenue for the next 10 years.
Call recording and coaching will have the same effect on B2B sales that video had on football. There isn’t a team in the NFL, or college that could compete without video. Football’s entire coaching and strategic methodology have been built around video. Everything, I mean everything evolves around what they see on video, and B2B sales call recording and coaching have the ability to have the same impact on sales.
I recently spoke with a CEO of a fast-growing tech company who recently implemented a call recording, coaching cadence and this is what he had to say:
“Bottom line – frankly I’m amazed we make any sales at all. it’s kind of depressing what I’m hearing”
His organization has been experiencing double-digit growth for several years. The companies average deal has increased by almost 70% over the past 3 years. They have been landing more and more sophisticated deals and clients in this same period, and yet when he started listening to his reps calls, he was flabbergasted. He just couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The team wasn’t positioning the product well against the competition. Their demos were fragmented and not aligned with customer needs. Pricing was being offered too early. Reps were even offering to lower the price before the prospect even said anything. It was unbelievable to hear the stories.
The team was leaving way too many opportunities on the table.
Now, the CEO understands where his team needs support, where they are losing deals and why they aren’t competitive in others. He’s now working with his sales leadership team to redesign the coaching, training and pipeline meetings to address the newly identified deficiencies.
Today, there are a plethora of new tools that allow in-depth call recording that compliments coaching. Execvision is an example. Execvision allows sales leaders to not only listen but take notes, search for unpleasant phrases like “um” or “like,” tag sections for review, rate, share, search and more. Imagine having a searchable database of all the interactions your sales organization is having with your prospects. That’s Execvision.
In addition to call recording tools like Execvision, there are now robust coaching tools such as Wide Angle designed to manage the coaching or feedback process. These performance management tools simplify the coaching process while increasing it’s effectiveness and output.
There has never been a better confluence of tools to enable the power of managing the qualitative or the “art” of sales. There is no reason to fly blind any longer. The need to interpret the quantitative data to evaluate a sales reps ability has passed. We now have the tools to watch, listen and assess how salespeople sell and that is a game changer.
Film study changed the game of football forever. An NFL or College team can NOT compete today without studying film. Every play, pass, run, block, and tackle is evaluated and assessed for a competitive advantage. Sales now has a similar tool. Sales now has the ability to listen to every question, recommendation, demo, negotiation, objection and offer sales people make.
It’s a game changer.
Call recording and a robust coaching cadence will be the biggest and most valuable initiatives sales organizations can embrace in 2017.
I’m on the record. This is the biggest opportunity for sales organizations since . . . ever.