When it comes to elevating sales performance, it’s understandable why organisations look to the most cost-efficient methods that will deliver the greatest bang for buck.
Most organisations opt for initiatives like:
Identifying new customer groups that you haven’t targeted before
Improving digital marketing to reach more customers with automated sales funnels
Go through an innovation process, like design thinking, to create a new product/service that will attract new customer groups which will easily help you increase sales
Aligning territories, customers with the capability of sales team members
Investing in professional development for your sales team to sharpen their sales capability
Determine your most and least profitable products or services and change your product/service mix to only selling high profit high demand products
And these are all sound, solid and appropriate.
But what’s missing here is the link that will determine whether or not you hit your targets this year amongst:
A shortage in talent
More uncertainty about markets and “return to normal”
Disruption to in person anything: customer meetings/presentations, team meetings, one on one meetings
Retention of the team you’ve already got / team member churn
And that is a team that is clear about how their role is aligned with their personal purpose.
When anyone is connected to that, clear about that and can vocalise it, they speak with such a degree of certainty and belief that they’re able to build trust quickly and show up in a way that makes our customers feel valued and treasured. It’s the difference between someone doing their job and someone living their purpose which happens to include their job (how they do what they do)…
It’s not easy to do but it is a simple process. Having it clarified by an organisation or at least by the leader of the sales team will help with:
Attracting the right people to the role and to your organisation because on reading any ad you place, the right people will say to themselves: “that sounds like me” which is what you want
Interviewing candidates: you can support the recruitment of the right people by ensuring the interview process includes behavioural questions that will unearth values, purpose and alignment
Onboarding and inducting newbies so they are set up with an expectation of how to deliver to customers rather than a focus just on targets – starting with the end in mind
Managing performance ongoing: team meetings, individual meetings, results….bringing people back to purpose means you will save yourselves an inordinate amount of time “pumping people up”!
Sales people are like everyone else in the sense that they’ll be more energised and focused when their role is personal. When they understand how it’s helping them to elevate their way of being, they have their own reasons for getting up and getting into their day. While eonomics (ie. Paying the bills) is a motivator, there are days when having this reason alone will not be enough to push further, to dig deeper. It’s external, not internal.
Teams that take the time to do this will find the rest of the year seems to be like riding down a path that is flatter and has heaps of downward runs: they may still have to peddle hard at times but for the most part it’s enjoyable and easy.
Imagine the experience your customers will have when they speak to a team member of yours that radiates a love of what they do, genuine desire to support the customer and an inexhaustible inside well of resources. That’s the difference.
