Yes the market is tough out there, and some industries are definitely hit harder than others. But in every industry,  there are companies working their sales strategy now, to make sure they are still winning despite the economy. When  the going gets tough, smart companies figure out a better way to do business and end up with a superior process and a  stronger company.

Here are three ways to look inside your company to improve sales performance. These work whether the economy is  working for or against you, but certainly they are necessary when the economy is tough.

The first way to drive sales is to set clear Sales Goals. A bubble up process is always healthier than a top down  approach. As you work with your sales team on a bubble up process, consider there four things: (1) trends going on in  the marketplace, (2) changes at your company or your vendors, (3) changes at your competitors, and (4) changes at  your customers.

With these considerations, now have your sales team set realistic goals for the upcoming year — broken down by  product line, by customer and by month.

If your team is not confident in their knowledge of the marketplace due to the economy, have them write both Best  Possible Outcomes (BPO) and Worst Case Scenario (WCS) sales goals that provide more of a range. You would be  surprised how many sales organizations throw out their sales plans because they don’t know how to forecast in a down economy. If you have not done this before, you will find this to be a powerful process. It is amazing how people want to achieve sales goals once they have been set.

The next way to drive sales after setting Sales Goals, is to do an Account Review with each of your sales team members. Look at each account and develop clear sales goals, strategies and action plans to grow their sales. If you work in an  industry where salespeople have hundreds of accounts, work the 80/20 rule and focus on the top accounts that  represent the majority of sales. If your industry is more characterized by one-off sales with few ongoing accounts, consider setting goals, strategies and action plans by Customer Category.

The third way to grow sales after setting Sales Goals and doing an Account Review (or Customer Category Review) with your sales team is to Develop Sales Skills. Start this by defining the top skills needed to be successful in your industry.  There are typically only five to seven Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) that your people need to be particularly good at.

Most business-to-business sales Critical Success Factors would include: Prospecting, Presenting, Follow up,  Professional Appearance, Attitude and Time Management. Identify the CSF’s for your sales team. Give each sales rep a  rating on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of their CSF’s. Once you’ve identified the lowest scoring CSF’s, close these performance gaps through training, one-on-one coaching, or mentoring with a salesperson who is strong in that CSF.

So what are you waiting for? The economy is not going to get any better, until you get better. Start taking steps now to  grow your sales, and you will see results before you know it.

By working with the best sales managers, we’ve identified four top priority areas that need to be worked on regularly, regardless of the industry you serve. Let’s not do busy work at the expense of the job you were hired to do: grow the sales!

Planning & Organizing

As a salesperson, this is the hardest thing to do — to plan out your weeks, months and years. But as a sales manager, you are the strategic thinker for the sales team: playing down the chess board, planning out next year’s new products  and services, how you will go to market, what trade shows to attend, what marketing materials will be needed, etc. Only the sales manager can do the Planning and Organizing for the sales team.

Recruiting & Selection

You know that you are only as good as your sales team. So you must have a regular system of meeting and interviewing new sales candidates. Even if you have a full complement of strong players, you should still spend a minimum of 5% of  your time building your talent pool.

Nothing keeps your team working harder than knowing you can easily replace them. And nothing makes you look at your team with a keen eye more than having other good people who may produce well for you.

Measuring & Reporting

Working the numbers, reevaluating your pipeline, completely understanding where your prospects and customers come from… each sales manager really has to know the finances of the business. Accurate forecasting is the hallmark of truly professional sales managers. Nobody is closer to it than you.

Once you have an effective pipeline management system that delivers accurate sales forecasts, you need to effectively  share this information. Upper management, production and service managers, and most importantly, your sales team  needs this information to effectively do their jobs.

Coaching & Development

This is where the rubber meets the road. If the sales manager is only as good as his or her sales team, then only with clear coaching and development does the sales manager make an average team good or a good team great.

This is the primary role of the sales manager. Many managers easily spend more than 50% of their time working with their people — either individually or at sales meetings. Coaching and Development is an ongoing process, with each  skill set learned, applied and becoming second nature before moving on to the next.

Each of these priority areas are investments in time; but like any investment, they provide a positive return. They are  strategic in nature and yet deliver real tactical results. In combination, these four priority areas are what creates a  great sales team that will deliver the numbers for you.

Certainly in recent years, you have noticed a clear message from your boss: “do more with less”. Your business- to-business sales cycle has probably lengthened due to increased hesitancy on your customers’ part. They put off  decision making until the last moment.

With a lengthened sales cycle and the pressure to do more, one answer is to increase your number of business  relationships. You really need to know more people than ever before in order to produce the same results: More contacts = more sales.

Fortunately, with sales automation software, you can manage those contacts without letting anyone fall between the cracks. Of course, technology can also be a distraction. Make sure e-mail, voicemail or “crackberry” don’t drain hours away from prime selling time.

To make best use of prime selling time, first ask yourself “what are my highest priority tasks — the activities that yield  the most important results?”

If your doctor said you could only work one day a week, what specific activities would you do on that one day? Sales producing activities would be your highest priority tasks. By determining your top priority tasks, you can schedule  them into your calendar first; then schedule the rest of your activities around them. A helpful sales formula is E x E =  R, Efficiency x Effectiveness = Results; this can be translated into Activities x Skills = Sales.

Efficiency refers to the activities or number of contacts you are making. Effectiveness is the quality of those contacts  and the quality of your performance in front of those contacts. In other words, if you want to increase sales, you need  to either increase your contacts, improve your performance, or both.

For many salespeople, the market has shifted to either “more activity” or to “better performance” — but they haven’t shifted along with their market. If you are doing the same work as last year but getting less results, this is a strong  indication that your market has shifted but you haven’t.

Each sales position has a unique set of five to seven critical functions that are required in the job. A typical sales  professional must be good at prospecting, first appointments, presentations, generating proposals and followup. Identify your own Critical Success Factors. Honestly rate your performance in each of the areas. Your lowest score is  the area that is holding your overall sales performance back and is known as your Weakest Link.

Finally, one of the best ways to get a real grip on time management is to develop a tremendous amount of clarity about what you are trying to do and how you are trying to do it. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off will drive  you to tremendous levels of stress.

Step out clear action plans for achieving important goals. Set time to review your goals and see if you are making progress. The time you invest in clear thinking about your goals and action plans will be returned to you tenfold in  better performance and higher quality of life.

Plant Seeds

As you begin to work with a new client, even prior to the client committing to your proposal, communicate that eventually you will be asking for referrals. When you are ready to ask, it will be easier to do so, and it is easier for them  to hear your request. Let them know that referrals are a natural outcome of your sales process.

Take Enough Time

Make sure you have enough time to effectively ask for referrals. While it typically happens at the end of a sales meeting, you don’t want to be rushed. If there isn’t enough time, save it for your next meeting. Always use an agenda to cover  your key ideas. The last item on your agenda should be “value discussion”, indicating to you it is time to ask for referrals.

Value Discussion

The best way to ask for referrals is to begin by exploring the kind of value you have produced for your client. Even if the client hasn’t yet signed up for your proposal, by defining their needs and making careful recommendations you have already created a tremendous amount of value for the client. “In what ways have I contributed to your business?” Make it a discussion by asking them value questions and contributing to the conversation. In fact, you should make this a habit at the end of every one of your client meetings.

Transition Question

When you shift gears to referrals, establish the importance of this conversation by using a transition question; “I have  something important I want to ask you”. Ask if you can discuss ways to bring that value to others. “Would it be okay if  we take a moment and brainstorm different people that you know who I can provide similar value for?” We don’t want  to ask for referrals and shut up. As in the value discussion, participate in the referral generation to help the client come up with ideas.

Suggest Names and Categories

If you have an actual name, then suggest it. Otherwise, prepare in advance a number of categories that apply to your client and their industry. What about people from your past job? Is there somebody else in a different division that I  should speak with? What about your customers? Distributors? Vendors? Competitors? Who have you discussed this project with?

Share Your Low Pressure Style

The number one reason that clients are reluctant to share referrals is they are afraid that you are going to pounce on  their friends and family and never let go until they return your call. Tell them your style is always low pressure and  that you will back off right away if there is no interest. This shows your client that your approach will be soft and professional.

Ask Them To Introduce You

If your client introduces you to your new prospect, it is much easier to get your calls returned. Many prospects will  take the call just out of respect for your client. There are a number of ways to have the client introduce you. Have them write a personal note, call the prospect, or send an email and copy you in. The best way is to have the client set up a  meeting for all three of you. You can meet over breakfast or lunch or attend an association dinner meeting together.

Once the client introduces you to your referrals, it is important that you follow up right away. Send out your own email or a package of information as soon as possible to indicate your professionalism and level of service. Follow up with a phone call and suggest a meeting. Keep your initial client in the loop on how progress is going. And thank them for the referral; they are then likely to send you more referrals.

There is a surefire approach that will take ice cold leads to warmed up prospects to hot opportunities and ultimately to  new clients, but it only works if you do. The system requires a consistent application of time every week in order to  deliver the results you are looking for.

There are five major ways to enter new leads into your New Business Development System. Regardless of which combination of these approaches you use, patience is the key. Once you put the suspect into your system, continue to work the system religiously. At about week 10, you will begin to see results: first appointments with new client opportunities.

The five ways to generate new leads are:

• Direct Contact — cold calling and foot work
• Networking — including asking for referrals
• Promotional Events — either your own road show or attending trade shows
• Advertising — which covers everything from magazine ads to internet generated leads, and
• Public Relations — writing for industry magazines, public appearances and getting corporate sponsorships.

Whether the new leads were generated as a result of exhibiting at a trade show or going door-to-door in an office park  or meeting people at a chamber of commerce dinner, you never expect them to buy right now. Your goal is to  determine if they are the right person to talk to and if they are a likely candidate for your product or service. If they are not a good candidate, you say “thank you” and move on to the next trade show attendee, next door or chamber member.

If they are a likely candidate, suggest a meeting to discuss their needs, knowing full well that their most likely response  is “send me some information”. Bingo! Now you enter them into your system. While the prospect thinks they have put  you off, you have just entered another opportunity into your hopper.

When you get back to your office, you send them your first contact letter, including your company information. The  rest of your system includes a series of carefully crafted correspondence including letters, email and quick phone contacts.

Essentially, there are a few different responses to your initial request for a meeting, and each prospect has a different correspondence schedule based on their initial response.

Regardless of your prospect’s correspondence track, at the appointed time, you deliver the all important second call.  In this call, you bypass the Didn’t Get It/Didn’t Read It syndrome by driving to the mini-qualifier: a few handpicked  questions that both determine client need and generate interest in your offering. At the conclusion of the miniqualifier, you suggest a meeting. More likely than not, you will get your appointment.

Don’t expect every initial lead to turn into an appointment. If you regularly add more into the top of your system,  follow the correspondence track and effectively deliver the second call with a mini-qualifier, you will have pretty solid  success. The key is not to expect prospects to give you meetings right off the bat. Rather, place likely candidates into  your system, patiently work your process, and watch as the system delivers the results you were looking for.

Turn Prospects into Customers and Customers into Clients

Tough economic times demand superior selling – the easy sales are gone. Inside Sales Training offers better skills for every part of your call, and we’ll customize it to your selling environment..

Do you have agents that are simply afraid to sell? They are happy just doing the customer service portion of the job? They’re hoping that the customer will ask “By the way, what other products are you selling?” Inside Sales Training workshop is a customized program that takes the fear and mystery out of selling.

Delivered live at your facility, this is an interactive program centered around relationship selling and teaches positive phrasing techniques to improve communication and customer response. We’ll explore the art of asking the right questions with the skill of listening for the cues that uncover the prospect’s hidden needs, wants and fears.

Your agents will begin employing a proven formula that makes them much more consistent and effective. No more “shooting from the hip” or letting the call go wherever the caller takes it. The Customized Sales Model will improve every part of the call, from Greetings and Initial Objections, to superior Needs Identification, much better product offers, Cross-selling/Up-selling, Closing and dealing successfully with Late-Call Objections.

Customization for your program is developed through an onsite observation, which allows for real life examples to be woven in and demonstrated throughout the training. Your staff will be provided with specific and practical sales techniques they can use on the very next call!

Program Agenda

• Relationship Selling
• Developing Trust
• Call Handling Strategies
• The Art of Conversation
• Sales Call Outcomes
• Organizational Skills

Although knowledge management may be important, transforming knowledge into organizational action is at least as important to organizational success. Competitive advantage comes from being able to do something others can’t do. Anyone can read a book or attend a seminar. The trick is in turning the knowledge into organizational action.

What keeps companies from turning what they know about enhancing performance into action? Here are four different barriers to turning knowledge into action.

1. When Talk Replaces Action

The first barrier is when talk is substituted for action. Making decisions, making presentations, producing documents and writing mission statements can facilitate developing knowledge, but these are not a substitute for action.

Managers often act as if merely hearing and talking about methods for doing innovative work eliminates the need to actually use the methods.

Avoid substituting talk for action by developing a culture that values simplicity and common sense. Use language that is action oriented, and utilize follow up meetings to  ensure what has been agreed to will actually be done.

2. Fear in the Workplace

The second barrier is when fear of management prevents people from acting on their knowledge. There is far more talk than action about using enlightened management techniques. In many organizations, taking care of people and putting them first is considered soft-headed and not business like.

In today’s environment of corporate downsizing, many workers consider themselves lucky just to have a job. Only a minority (38%) are very confident of their ability to quickly find new employment.

Fear of job loss is the number one reason for the failure of re-engineering efforts. Fear prevents people from delivering the bad news necessary to create change. Fear causes a  focus on the short term, often creating problems in the long run.

The key to driving out fear from your organization is to encourage open and free communication, decentralize decision making, give people second chances, and learn from and even celebrate mistakes.

3. When Measurement Replaces Judgment

Flawed measurement systems can be a large barrier to turning knowledge into action. Everyone knows that measurement focuses attention and “what gets measured gets done”.

Some measurement systems focus on short term financial performance and can neglect other aspects of the company.

Other measurement systems are overly complex with separate measures for financial performance, control systems, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, etc. Often precise measurement systems can miss the more subtle, important elements of performance.

Measurements should be guides, helping to direct behavior, but not so powerful in their implementation that they substitute for judgment and wisdom. Measurement systems that help organizations develop are relatively simple and use comparatively few metrics.

4. Internal Competition

Flawed measurement systems can often create internal competition; as do other management practices such as some recognition programs, contests between departments, and published ranking of unit or individual performance.

Each of these practices creates a zero-sum game, in which the success of one group or person comes at the expense of another. Internal competition undermines organizational loyalty, teamwork and knowledge sharing. Internal competition makes it even more difficult for people to put knowledge into action and to learn from each other.

Instead, focus people’s attention on external competitive threats. Avoid compensation and measurement systems that create internal competition. Managers need to model the right behavior by acting collaboratively, sharing information and helping others.

Knowledge and information are crucial to performance. But organizational performance depends more on turning knowledge into action, than on simply knowing the right thing. In fact, often management has knowledge of what needs to be done, but fails to act consistently with that knowledge.

Here are guidelines for turning knowledge into action:

1. Focus on Process – The process needs to be founded on respect for the individual and their need to understand before they can do. Process starts with philosophy–not specific techniques or practices–but some basic guidelines or principles about how the process will operate.
2. Knowing Comes From Doing and Teaching Others – People learn by observation and from doing together with someone who’s done it before. Teaching others is another way of knowing.
3. Focus on Action – Action counts more than elegant plans and concepts. The principle of “ready, fire, aim” creates opportunities to learn by doing. Doing first and then planning establishes a culture where action is valued.
4. Become Risk Tolerant – There is no doing without mistakes. What will be your company’s response? Will you celebrate good tries? Or will you treat failure harshly, so people are encouraged to engage in perpetual analysis, discussion and meetings?
5. Leaders Lead – What leaders do, how they spend their time and how they allocate resources matters. Leaders create environments, reinforce norms, and help set expectations through what they do, through their action and not just their words.

Now we know more about why organizations fail to turn knowledge into action, but these insights are insufficient to solve the problem. Now it is up to you to turn this knowledge into action.

If you take some action now, you will learn more about how to turn knowledge into action. And please share with me whatever insights you gain from that experience.

Climate, like the weather, is not static and unchanging. Nevertheless, as with any locale, certain climate patterns are unique to each organization. More importantly, unlike the weather, we all are involved in creating our organizational climate on a daily basis.

A healthy organizational climate is proven to boost productivity. Elements include supportive management, contribution, self-expression, recognition, clarity and challenge.

For almost a century, researchers have explored the causes of work related injuries, a major cost to any organization and one of the earliest measures of organizational incoherence. At first, it was believed certain employees were more “accident prone” than others; but studies failed to support this contention as a definitive personality trait.

Research then shifted to uncovering the personality traits that differentiated workers who were hurt from those who avoided injury.

Looking into the psychology of safety became essential as organizations such as OSHA determined that 90% of all accidents are caused by unsafe acts, while only 10% are caused by unsafe working conditions.

The vast majority of workers today are employed in non-manufacturing jobs, where workplace safety concerns focus more around issues such as ergonomics, workload and mental and emotional processes, as opposed to the heavy labor of our forefathers. Yet workers’ compensation claims are soaring in many non-manufacturing sectors of the economy. Health, safety and environmental issues are growing in importance, especially in industries such as technology, petroleum and aviation, where disregard for these issues can be catastrophic.

According to Dr. Phil Smith, an organizational psychologist, a review of 61 studies of job burnout concludes that of the three facets of burnout — emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and diminished personal accomplishment — emotional exhaustion is most sensitive to factors which negatively influence workplace climate and is the strongest predictor of attachment to the organization.

Dr. Smith goes on to suggest that, “While a good emotional climate is not by itself sufficient to ensure success, a bad climate is certain to prevent success.”

An organization is much like an organism. It requires a wide variety of nutrients and resources to be healthy; it can get sick in response to external stressors or internal imbalance and, unless it learns to heal itself, eventually becomes sick and dies.

Typically, when an organization recognizes something is not right, the solutions are to focus on cost cutting, process re-engineering, product improvements or customer service. While these well-intentioned initiatives are usually necessary, they are not sufficient. They focus on the symptoms, not the cause. In many organizations, this classic band-aid approach actually creates more frustration, anger and anxiety; meanwhile the organization becomes even sicker.

Once people are drained emotionally, the creative energy needed to develop new innovations is sapped. Additional energy is then expended in inefficient ways that put added strain on people, and the downward spiral accelerates. Acrimony, mistrust, antagonism and blame are just a few of the emotional reactions that take up residence in the workplace. Finger pointing becomes the preferred exercise program, and left unchecked, the very creative source for the organization is drained.

Work environments characterized by excess stress, contention and anxiety breed insecurity and unproductivity and inhibit creativity. People do not want to come to work in these rigid environments. The negative attitudes compound the pressure on an already strained organization.

When people are valued, appreciated and cared for, they produce more, have greater loyalty to their employer and higher levels of creativity. Attitudes like appreciation, care and compassion are not just sweet, they are powerful medicine for an organizational virus.

In addition, employees must be given tools to manage their perceptions and emotional reactions so they become active creators of a healthier climate, not just victims of management whims.

Analyzing organizational incoherence, while giving employees practical tools for managing and leveraging their own emotional and intellectual processes, represents a powerful parallel approach to regaining organizational vitality.

Upon careful inspection, we find that creativity seems to thrive at all levels and phases of business. Beginning clerks to  corporate heads, and everyone in between, can be creative. This includes data analysts as well as “the idea man” from marketing.

Creativity is more individual than organizational. Some people are highly creative in traditional manufacturing  environments. Others stagnate in the most dynamic advertising firms. It is definitely easier to be creative in a company whose policies encourage it of course, but corporate policy is not a requirement for creative expression.

So what do we mean by creativity? One definition of creativity suggests that your idea is creative if it is novel and appropriate, useful, correct or a valuable response to the task at hand. Furthermore, your idea is creative if it is  heuristic rather than algorithmic. An algorithmic idea imposes it’s own tried and true solution. A heuristic idea stems  from no such clear path — rather you have to create one.

Creativity is more than the successful mastery of problem solving techniques. It is far more personal, and yet  universal. We look within to find our natural creative source. At the source of your personal creativity is your natural intuition: your direct knowing without reasoning, your gut feel.

Intuition has always been a mainstay of business ideas, but until fairly recently it has been denied as a legitimate  business tool in the era of over dependence on analysis. This is no longer true. Now business people speak of intuition  with pride. And everyone can develop their personal creative source and natural intuition.

So if everyone has the same access to the universal personal creative source, why haven’t more of us been naturally  and consistently creative? Our natural creative drive may just be suppressed by our internal voice of judgement. Our internal scripting has been heavily influenced by society — which says our ideas are not useful, and we will look stupid  if we try. However, if you suppress your internal voice of judgement and practice creative thinking strategies, you will  be amazed at the quantity and quality of your ideas.

Creative thinking strategy starts with a core problem or need and moves in various ways through a series of stages, or  generally accepted parts of the creative process. These consist of preparation and information gathering, cerebration or digestion of the gathered material, incubation or forgetting the problem, realization or sudden inspiration, and  finally, implementation, where you work out the idea and turn it into something worthwhile.

When successful workers discuss how they use their creativity to handle business problems, their approach does seem  similar to that of an artist: they become totally immersed in expressing their inner vision, knowing that their chief challenge is to organize familiar materials in a fresh way. They are curious, adventurous, experimental, willing to take  risks, and absorbed in meeting the challenges of their working day.

Once you begin to develop and use your intuition as part of your creative thinking strategy, you will find that you  become more aware and more effective in business as well as in your personal life.