My family and I love to take advantage of a weekend getaway with a fun road trip, but that also means we need to be ready to pack up and leave when the moment presents itself! So, even though I "maintain" my car by manufacturer standards on a regular basis, I still take my car in for a thorough inspection before every road trip.
Just like I have a trusted and experienced mechanic examine my car prior to road trips, the same type of detailed inspection should be performed on your sales department and its performance.
It’s not uncommon to want to uncover the root of a problem that we know we need to address. It’s when things are going well that we miss the opportunities to do even better. These aren’t opportunities that present themselves, they’re the opportunities you need to dig for. But if we don’t dig deep and look for the ‘needle in a haystack’ opportunity to improve sales performance, we won’t find it.
Conducting a Sales Diagnostic once a year is one of the best ways to tune-up your sales department by taking a step back and looking at it from a 10,000 foot view. You can conduct an analysis on everything from sales culture to new business development. You may choose to evaluate proposals and also year-over-year patterns within key account attrition. For issues you have already identified as problems you want to fix, adding a greater focus on certain data points can often times help identify the root cause and in turn, a viable solution based on long and short-term goals.
Think about it... when was the last time you stepped back and took a deep dive into these things as it relates to your sales performance:
- The Numbers
- The Business
- Your Process
- Your Pricing
- Your Metrics
- Your Service
For example, take your business (just one in the list of six above). Have you honestly assessed the details that attribute to your business and how it relates to sales performance? If you were to break down the business details, it would look like:
- Problems We Solve
- Common Objections
- Reason for Being
- Elevator Speech
- Top Competitors and How You Compare
Breaking down your processes is another that managers often overlook. Looking at the list below, wouldn't it make sense to do an in-depth analysis of these process-related items and how they might be able to be enhanced to increase your sales performance?
- Performance Review Process
- Sales Structure
- Job Roles
- Ideal Prospect Profile
- Decision-Making Process
- Valid Business Reasons (VBR)
- Sales Processes
If you haven’t looked under the hood of your sales department lately, there's never a better time than now. There's still enough time in the year to address revenue challenges you are experiencing, and late enough to look at the data thus far for that “needle in a haystack,” revenue-generating opportunity.
