5 Ways to Accelerate Sales Performance for Year End

Hitting plan requires a healthy sales pipeline. If you are worried about sales performance for the second half or you are recovering from a challenging quarter, here are 5 ways you can get back on track to make your yearly sales plan.

01. Diagnose Your Pipeline

If your results aren’t where they need to be, the first thing to look at is your sales pipeline.

In our work, we help sales organisations recognise four types of pipelines. When assessed, they can reveal a lot about your salesperson’s focus, activity, opportunities and territory coverage. The four pipeline types are:

• Healthy Sales Pipeline: Has lots of prospects at the start of the sales cycle. It has lots of opportunities (with a healthy undiscounted dollar volume) and it is consistently delivering sales each month (or each period that is realistic to deliver sales).
• False Hope Sales Pipeline: Has lots of prospects, and lots of opportunities and yet it does not deliver closes. Everything seems strong, but each month seems to end with excuses instead of deals. Typically the false hope is in the opportunities, not the prospects. Often there are opportunities that should be removed as they are no longer active or realistic to close. Some salespeople like to keep everything in the pipeline as that is their reminder to stay in touch.
• Thin Sales Pipeline: Has a few prospects, a few opportunities, and infrequent closes. The good news is that the salesperson can move a suspect to prospect to an opportunity and then close. The bad news is that the volume in all stages of the pipeline is not nearly enough.
• Congested Sales Pipeline: Has lots and lots of prospects but few turn into opportunities and thus very few closes. Healthy top of the pipeline but the rest is congested. Although the salesperson is good at identifying prospects and booking meetings, they may not have uncovered the priority need or be speaking to the right stakeholder. You may also find that they need support with their meeting/call structure.

If your sales pipeline isn’t healthy, the next thing to look at is activity.

02. Increase Activity Quantity and Quality

To drive increased sales results, review the quantity and quality of the current activity.

To improve the quantity, consider making proactive calling a team sport.

Two or three times per week, kick-off prospecting as a team in the morning. Set individual goals and come back together mid-day or at the end of the day (either on a conference call or in person) to debrief. This will increase the number of first meetings, create consistency for prospecting and hold everyone accountable to their proactive calling goals.

To increase quality, you can have salespeople team up. The benefit of doing this is that the salesperson gets feedback from peers for immediate improvement, and it has the added benefit of making prospecting more fun.

An approach that increases both quantity and quality of activity is the “1-2 Punch” method. Have your team leave a short voicemail to be heard, then follow up with an email to make it easy for the prospect to respond.

03. Lead Frequent Pipeline Reviews

The best sales organisations use pipeline reviews to drive sales productivity. You’ll also promote accountability by leading pipeline meetings on a weekly basis.

Rather than reviewing every opportunity line by line, ask questions and be curious. Provide coaching on priorities and focus areas that will increase performance. Remember that pipeline is just one side of the equation; make sure you uncover the story behind the numbers.

Holding frequent pipeline reviews may put pressure on your sales team. As the leader, you can shift the energy from your team feeling pressured to feeling motivated. Like a ship with limited time to get everything ready, you’ll need all hands on deck. Create an “in this together” mentality by infusing fun that creates energy and balance. This brings us to our next point.

04. Hold Weekly Sales Team Meetings

Gather your troops for 30-60 minutes on a weekly basis to set the focus and build engagement across your team.

Typically, sales meetings are:

• Sales leader dominated (70% of the talk time)
• Result focused (we are X% short of our target)
• Information based
• Individuals on the team share in detail what they did last week or will do this week
• A necessary evil

Instead, start leading sales meetings that your team wants to attend. Here is how you can make your sales team meetings engaging and valuable:

• The team contributes and shares (leader speaks 30% maximum)
• Activity and result focused
• Skill based
• Individuals practice and solve more than share
• Frame the time as the essential component to team success

Don’t be afraid to infuse some fun. Sharing a theme for the week, or creating a contest or game will help create energy and maintain balance from the pressure being put on the team.

In setting the focus for the week, reinforcing key selling behaviours, and collectively solving challenging problems, you’ll strengthen your team’s sales performance.

05. Don't Forget to Celebrate

Take the time to reward and recognise your salespeople. The goal of a reward and recognition programme is to reinforce the right behaviours and acknowledge them in such a way that your team is motivated to continue to exemplify them.

Choose wisely when determining how to reward and recognise the efforts of your team – one size does not fit all. It could be a quick thank you note, recognition in a newsletter, or tickets to a sporting event. Either way, make sure it resonates. Variety in frequency, value, and rationale will help keep your team engaged and motivated.

To improve the sales management practices of your entire sales leadership team contact us to learn more about our Practical Sales Management training programme.