The pressure on sales teams has increased significantly in recent years. Customers are not coming to us so much anymore: we need active, „hunter” sales – which in turn requires not only new skills but also a new culture, paradigms and systems. But it is not easy to identify what this means exactly.

What do we need to rethink?

• Organizational culture: the culture of successful sales teams is markedly different from the way things are done in other areas of the company. Do we know whether our sales culture is currently helping or hindering sales success? (The elements of a successful sales culture are also listed below.)
• Taking responsibility: in difficult market conditions, it is very easy for salespeople to justify their failures by saying that competition is too fierce, our product is expensive, or our company is inflexible. How typical is this of your salespeople? If so, it’s best to immediately start shifting the responsibility back to them, even if there is an element of truth in what they say. After all, a salesperson who blames others will not even think about what he or she could do differently or better.
• Desire or compulsion? Do you know if your salespeople love to sell – or are they in this job because they must make a living? If the latter, chances are that you are wasting your money on training and coaching them: most of the training will fall on deaf ears.
• Incentive scheme: does it stimulate peak sales performance? This is also related to the previous question: the ‘forced seller’, if he wants more income, will knock on his boss’s door and ask for a pay rise. The real salesperson works to earn the extra. This, of course, only works if the variable income is sufficiently high compared to the fixed amounts they get. If the fixed is large enough to pay the bills, the „forced sellers” stay with us and the great ones leave.
• Need to be liked: how important is it for our salespeople to be liked? As human beings, we all want to be loved – but to be successful in sales, it is essential to satisfy this in our personal lives and to dare to risk being disliked by a customer. The hallmarks of too much need to be liked:
  • They do not ask their clients the hard, firm questions that would make them make a decision. This lengthens their sales cycle.
  • They spend a lot of time listening to their customers complaints („crying together”), wasting each other’s time.
  • If the customer asks for a discount, instead of defending the price, they go home and start to represent the customer’s interests to the boss.
  • And the sales manager who needs to be liked will not be assertive enough in holding his staff accountable, causing further inefficiency.
• Pipeline and forecasting: put your hands on your heart and answer the following question: How much faith do you have in your salespeople’s forecasts? The answer we often get to this question is „I mostly divide it by half”. Is the pipeline „bloated” in your company? This could be an indication of your salespeople’s need to be liked (they want to look nice). Or is it just too few opportunities? The health and reliability of the pipeline shows how healthy the sales team is.
• The sales manager’s schedule: successful sales managers spend 80% of their time coaching, holding people accountable, supervising, developing and selecting, and the rest is just administration, strategy, planning etc. Are your leaders spending enough time with their people? If not, they won’t get the most out of their salespeople.
• Recruitment: do you recruit all the time or only when there is a vacancy? The latter can easily lead to complacency. Are you crystal clear about the criteria under which you replace someone, or do you tolerate mediocre performance (which makes it likely to be repeated)? Do you hire salespeople who are sympathetic or who can sell? Recruiting is one of the most delicate aspects of sales management, because a good salesperson sells himself easily. Do you have a recruitment strategy that is markedly different from the way you recruit in other areas of your company?
• Value-based selling: do your people have the skills to defend price rather than haggle in the face of stiff price competition? This requires a complex set of skills at all stages of the sales process.
• And finally – their own buying habits. This means, for example, that if, in the case of a high-value purchase (not a car), after having chosen the product he likes, he „sleeps on it”, he will be vulnerable if the customer says the same thing to him. Instead of recognizing and treating this as an excuse, he will say „of course, I’ll call you back” (especially if it’s important for him to be liked) –but by then, the customer will not be as open and interested in the purchase as before. Similarly, if they are always looking for the cheapest product, they will not be effective if they have to sell premium products. And you simply cannot afford to allow our salespeople to waste their time. Do you know the buying habits of your salespeople (and sales managers)?

How can we find out?

These questions are increasingly pressing for our client companies, as securing ongoing revenue is harder than ever. To help find the answers and save our clients the painstaking exploration work, we have formed a strategic alliance with Objective Management Group (OMG).

Who is OMG?

Since 1990, the company has assessed more than 2,300,000 salespeople from over 30,000 companies. Based on the insights gained from their research:

• They don’t just assess who can sell, but especially who will sell among the salespeople.
• They quantify the percentage of sales potential. 
• They determine who can be trained, who can be coached, and who is the best person to buy from – both in sales and sales management positions.

OMG Sales Audit

The complex assessment therefore covers all salespeople (by name, of course), as well as sales managers and the whole sales organization. It is not a satisfaction survey, not a skills test, not even a psychometric tool, but an audit that provides concrete and quantifiable data and guidance to develop your sales team to world class in your particular context – whether SME or multinational.

Want to try it out?

Of course, OMG not only measures existing salespeople, but also those you are recruiting. Want to find out with a 92% probability if your candidate will succeed?

No training or background is required to interpret OMG assessments. The screening report will tell you right on the cover page whether or not it recommends hiring the employee being assessed. If it does, it is 92% likely to be successul, according to measurements to date. If it doesn’t recommend him, but you do hire him, there’s a 70% chance that the candidate will not be around after 3 months.

Think how much time you can save by skipping unnecessary interviews! Also – how much money can you save by choosing your candidates well?

Now you can test the system for 72 hours, with any number of candidates, free of charge and without any obligation by clicking on this link.

Test the system now and see why it’s the best of its kind!