I’m participating in a discussion with a group of people I deeply respect.  It is about managing sales performance, particularly about getting sales people to do things they don’t like to do.  You know what those are:  Spending time doing reports for management, updating the CRM system, attending one more training class they think they don’t need, getting those expense reports in on time, participating on an internal task force……..   The list goes on.  The argument of sales people is always the same, “You’re keeping me away from the customer, don’t you want me selling?”  “This will keep me making my number.”

In the discussion, a suggestion has been made, “we should base some of their compensation on having them do this [activity].  What if we based X% of their bonus on doing these activities?”

I think this is a fundamental problem.  Sales people are motivated by compensation–aren’t all of us.  However, tying everything to the compensation plan is wrong.  It dilutes the plan–pretty soon the plan gets so confusing with the number of bonus elements, that it no longer becomes a motivator.  What are we saying our people should do?  Where should they focus?  Do we want them to sell?  Do we want them to do other things?  Which is more important?

This is a common problem, I think too often, managers try to leverage the compensation plan to drive the behaviors we want.  It’s kind of like a parent, giving a child a reward for doing what they have been asked.  Over the long term, it drives dysfunctional behaviors  –”You want me to do this, you have to pay me for it.”

We need to remember, there are several dimensions to performance management.  One is the compensation plan.  It should focus on the 2-3 major behavioral and performance expectations you want the sales person to focus on—in the case of sales people, that’s probably something directly related to sales.  We want to keep this clear, simple, unambiguous.

There is another side to performance management, that’s the performance plan or review process.  Too many managers don’t use this–frankly they do a bad job of managing this process and reviewing performance.  Just a point of clarification, many think a performance plan is something you put in place for people who are on notice and must improve their performance or be terminated. 

The performance plan is (or should be) something different.   It should set the basic standards of performance we have for each person in the organization.  It should establish each person’s goals and objectives for the year–not only their quota, but other expectations we have of the person and their expected contribution to the organization.  It provides a framework for the behavioral standards of each person.  The performance plan is where managers need to address expectations of the job that may not, or should not, be covered in the compensation plan.  If we expect CRM systems to be kept up to date, we don’t want to compensate them on doing this, we want to set it as a performance objective in their performance plan.  If we want them to do certain developmental activities, these should be covered in the performance plan.

I think a performance plan is critical for everyone.  It sets overall goals and objectives for each person in the organization, it outlines areas of personal development, it establishes “MBO’s.”   In many organizations, the performance plan and subsequent review is the basis for establishing raises, promotions and other things.  Every organization should have a performance planning process, every person should have a performance plan.  Managers should periodically review performance against the plan as part of their normal coaching process.  The goal is to make sure people achieve their performance objectives, that they are continuing to develop and perform.

It’s important for the sales person and the manager to develop the performance plan jointly–it provides the framework for them to work together, making sure expectations are being met, for aligning priorities and objectives, for growth and development.  It provides a road map for both the sales person and manager to inspect throughout the year.  It provides the basis for a coaching plan for managers.

In managing performance, we need to leverage both the compensation plan and the performance plan.  Without both, managers aren’t leveraging the tools necessary to develop their people and drive the highest levels of performance.

A few weeks, ago, my post on The Most Used – Useless Metric In Sales created an avalanche of comments and emails.  Many of you commented on a variety of “useless metrics” you have experienced.  One of the most popular categories of “useless metrics” was Activity metrics.  Activity metrics are very popular, they’re easy to establish and measure.  There are all sorts of activity metrics:  Number of outgoing/incoming phone calls handled per day/week, number of customer meetings per day/week, number of proposals, number of sales opportunities in the funnel — the list is endless.

The problem with activity metrics is that all they measure is activity (dughhhh), they don’t measure the appropriateness, impact, or outcomes of the activity.   Activity metrics tend to measure what you’ve done, not whether you have moved the opportunity forward in the sales process.  In establishing activity metrics, it’s important to understand the behaviors they drive and to assess whether they are motivating the right outcomes.   It’s important to define the metric in terms of the results you are trying to achieve.

As I mentioned, Activity Metrics show up in various forms.  They can be goals that management sets on number of calls, meetings, proposals.  Activity also shows up in sales processes, one of my favorites is “Meet with decision-makers.”  For what purpose?  OK, I met them, I said “Hi,” they know who I am and what I am selling.  Did I bother to ask them their needs and priorities?  Did I determine their role in the decision making process?  Did I ask them about their attitudes toward us and the competition?  Do I understand why they are involved and what a personal win might be?

Another example of activity oriented metrics run amuck, requires me to reveal a deep dark secret from my formative years as a sales person.  Early in my sales career, my manager in the hopes of motivating the team to spend more time with customers, set the following metric:  There was a $10/day fine, if you were in the office between 8:30-4:30, unless you were entering an order, attending a meeting, or researching a sales opportunity.  You can guess what happened, we were already spending as much time with customers as we could–the team was good, we were really driven to make our numbers, we knew that we had to meet with the customers, but they only had the time to see us a certain amount of time, try as we might, we couldn’t fill all that time with cusotmer meetings.  Well, we solved the problem, the reality was, at least one day a week, we would have to pay $10 to our manager.  My teammates and I thought about it, we figured, why not spend that money in a way that we wanted to—that summer, every Friday, we ended up going to the movies–I’ve never seen so many movies.

Our manager’s intent was right, but the way the measure was implemented motivated unanticipated behavior.  When she understoond what we were doing, she quickly  stopped the metric, we started coming back into the office and doing things that would get us more meetings.

Often in doing reviews with sales people who have strong activity measures, I see much of the same thing.  People say similar things, “It’s easy to make my ‘call number,’  I can dial the phone so many times, I can talk to someone, they are often people that I know will never have an intention of buying, but I talk to them because I make my number.”  It’s hard to criticize them, they are doing exactly what their managers want them to do.

The problem is the way the metric is defined.  I actually like activity metrics.  Activity metrics, properly structured are great forward looking indicators.  Good activity metrics can give you great insight into your likelihood of meeting your overall business goals.  As an example, I measure myself on a couple of key activity metrics, but they are defined in a way that focuses me on achieving my objectives, not just accomplishing the activity.  For instance, I have to have a certain number of calls or meetings each week.  Those calls have to be with a certain type of person and produce very specific outcomes.  It’s a key metric for me.  I know if I achieve my goal, that I am highly likely to achieve my overall quota.  What makes this different though, is the activity is very well defined in terms of its purpose and the outcome.  Without this, it could be useless.

There’s another problem with activity metrics, it’s the way managers use them.  Too often activity metrics are used as a weapon (Metrics — The Secret Weapons Of Sales Managers) rather than as a diagnostic.  Since Activity metrics give you a forward looking view of the business, when an individual or team is not achieving the metric, it’s important to look at the underlying reasons.  Have there been fundamental shifts in the business or markets that are causing people to not achieve the activity goals?  Are there specific skills problems that might indicate a need for coaching or training?  Does the person understand the selling process, are they executing it well?  Activity metrics are great indicators and warning signs, they are not ends in themselves.

Too often, we also see too many activity metrics.  A sales person has to make a certain number of phone calls, have a certain number of meetings, submit a certain number of proposals, have a certain number of opportunities.  Too many activity metrics confuse the sales person on what the real priorities are, the key goals.  I believe there should be, at most, 2 activity measures.  The trick is determining the 2 that have highest impact on what you want to achieve.  It requires real study to understand what really drives your business.

Activity metrics can be very powerful.  Great sales professionals establish personal activity metrics to guide themselves, improving their impact and productivity.  Great leaders put in place appropriate activty metrics and use them as diagnostics.  When you are putting in place these types of metrics make sure you:

1. Clearly define what you are trying to achieve with the activity–what outcomes, what results?  Make sure the activity focuses on achieving something, not just getting a “tick mark.”
2. Re-assess activities you have in your sales process.  Make sure they are clearly defined.  Again focus on achieving outcomes, not going through the motions.
3. “Game” the activities.  Look at how the sales people might behave in achieving the activity goals.  You don’t want them spending afternoon’s in the movies.  If in gaming them you are getting the behaviors and outcomes you want, then you probably have a good metric.
4. Realize the activity metrics are powerful indicators and warnings–they are great diagnostics.  Use them for this, look at the underlying reasons for not achieving a metric.
5. Keep them to a minimum, use no more than 2.  Make sure you have identified the 2 key activities that really drive your business.

Make your activity metrics useful and you will really drive business growth!

Several days ago, I wrote a post, The Most Used — Useless Metric In Sales.  It’s generated quite a bit of discussion in the various sites where it appeared.  In the post, I attacked the weighted probabiliy — based on progress through the sales cycle (you know –Qualified is something like 25%, Discovery, 50%, Proposal 75%, and Closing 100%).  A series of discussions on sales forecasting started, so I thought I would toss more wood on the fire.

Accurate sales forecasts are critical—not just for sales, but for the entire organizattion.  Resources, funds, schedules, expectations are set, based on the forecast.  Forecast accuracy is usually one of the top 5 concerns virtually every CEO, CFO, or Sales Executive has when talking about the sales organization (surpassed only by making the numbers, productivity, etc.). 

Try as we might, the sales forecast will never be 100% accurate (unless we forecast after we get the order).  At best, the sales forecast can be thought of as an “informed guess.”  Some of you, justifiably, are thinking  –  Dave, you’ve really gone off the deep end on this one, you can’t be advocating that we “guess.”

Let me break “informed guess” down a little.  We want to focus the weighting in those words to the “informed” piece.  This means using real data and analytics to develop the forecast.  Most companies have rich historical data that can provide a baseline for forecasting.  Couple this with external data, market information, real time feedback from customers, demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and all sorts of other information, we can develop very rich models that provide greater insight into likely behaviors of customers — consumers and enterprises alike.  In the end, people make the forecast, so this data informs us.

On the “guess” side, the challenge is that everyone comes to the table with different assumptions, biases, expectations, and beliefs about the business.  On the “guess” side, we need to reduce variability in the “guess” element.  We do this doing a number of things.  First and foremost is a strong, well defined, and well executed sales process  (but you knew I’d get sales process into this).  If everyone is doing their own thing, executing the way they want, we have no ability to predict the outcome.  Second, we must have a common set of assumptions, rules, processes, and expectations by which we come up with our estimates.  If we come to the forecasting table with different assumptions regarding risk, timing, and so forth, it is impossible to develop a forecast that everyone buys into.  This variability of approach creates challenges to the accuracy and acceptance of the forecast.  Extend this over time, forecast to forecast to forecast, and we can have wide swings in approaches and accuracy or meaning.

So the forecast will always be an “informed guess.”  We increase the accuracy both by leveraging data and analytics to be better informed and putting in place strong processes and ground rules to reduce the variability of our guesses.  I can, and have, gone much deeper into this, but will stop here and pose the questions:  Does this ring true in your experience?  is the sales forecast an “informed guess?’  How do you increase sales forecast accuracy?

If you are curious, I’ve written a much more extensive white paper on this:  Moving Beyond The Crystal Ball:  Improving Sales Forecasting and Increasing Odds To Win.  If you’d like a free copy, send me an email at dabrock [at] excellenc [dot] com.  I’d be glad to send it to you.

I’m sitting in my office–it’s 97 degrees in the office, I’m fuming, it’s been one of those weeks.  I was traveling all week, thinking I was fortunate enough to miss the very hot weather we are having in Southern California (OK, some of you may think I am whining). 

On Friday, I called my wife, both air conditioning systems in the house had failed — we had just replaced them last October with completely new systems.  I told her to call the air conditioner company to get out to the house.  That evening, I called her again, “had they fixed the problem?”  “No–they haven’t shown up yet.  They said they would be here by 1:00, it’s now 4:30,” she said.  I told her, I’d call the owner of the company to see what was up. 

I called him, didn’t get him, but talked to the office manager.  She apologized, saying that they were running behind schedule, but someone would be there Friday.  Saturday morning, before jumping on the plane, I called my wife.  “Are things back to normal?”  “They haven’t shown up yet……”  She had that tone in her voice, I thought I was about to get a performance review.  I put in a hasty call to the company–got their voicemail and left a polite but urgent voice message.  When I landed, guess what —-yes, you know the drill—they still hadn’t shown up.  This time, I got the owner on the line.  He said that he would personally come by to look at and fix the systems.  I told him that I would re-arrange my schedule so that I could be home all afternoon for him.

Well, that was yesterday, today’s Sunday, no messages, no air conditioning, nothing.  I spent much of my time preparing letters to the Better Business Bureau and other organizations—I guess the heat is getting to me.  Now tomorrow, I have to re-scheduled my business meetings so I can get this guy to meet his commitments (by the way–it’s all warranty work, he doesn’t appear to want to honor that.).

I wish this was an isolated case.  But we encounter it every day–in both big and little ways.  It’s the sales person that committed to call you at a certain time, then 30 minutes later–when you are in a meeting, he calls offering some excuse but expecting to take your time.  It’s the team-mate who has committed a certain set of deliverables on a certain schedule, but fails to meet the commitment–not just late, but no deliverables.  It’s the person that’s constantly 10 minutes late to a meeting, keeping everyone else waiting….   I’ll stop there, I could get carried away.

This afternoon, as I’ve been reflecting, I’ve realized how common place it is for us not to meet our commitments.  Sure we tend to make the “big one’s” — at least when they serve our self interests.  But, it’s unusual for us to meet the little commitments.  I happen to be a little obsessive about phone calls and meetings.  It always strikes me as strange when at least 90% of the people I’m calling exclaim, “Wow–right on the dot!”  They think it’s unusual, to me it’s meeting my commitment.

I few years ago, I was talking to a friend.  He’d built a very good contracting business in our community.  I was asking him his secret, he replied, “I wish it was my ‘craftsmanship,’ but really it’s about meeting commitments.  I show up on time, I do the work they contracted for, I clean up afterwards—just the basics.  That’s really 80% of what’s made me successful and why they hire me over other very capable contractors.”

Just the basics—-showing up on time—-meeting your commitments—–80% of customer satisfaction and differentiation.   It’s a shame it’s not the norm–why do we settle for it?

I’m tempted to end this post with something to the effect of “sweating the details….”  Sorry, the heat is getting to me.

For years I’ve been amazed by the number of very smart sales people and leaders who have a blind spot in forecasting.  One of the top issues CEO’s, CFO’s, and even Chief Sales Officers have is forecast accuracy.  One of the most used forecasting methodologies based on a “weighted revenue” approach. 

This approach takes the sum of all opportunities in the pipeline, multiplying the revenue for each opportunity by a probability factor.  This makes sense statistically, it’s called expected revenue.  For example, if you have a $100,000 sale and a 70% probability, the expected value of the sale is $70K — we know this from statistics.  So what’s the problem?

The root of the problem is really in the way most organizations assess the probability factor.  For most organizations, the probability assigned is based on where you are in the sales process.  For example, if you have qualified the opportunity, you might have a 25% probability; after you have completed discovery, you have 50%; after you have submitted a proposal, you have 75%; and after you have closed, you have 100%.  Makes sense, as you go through the sales process, presumably you are improving your chances of winning the business.  All perfectly logical—all perfectly meaningless.  Yet, virtually every CRM system, virtually every forecasting methodology relies on this approach.

Now you say, “Dave, who are you to say this is meaningless, after all it’s been the cornerstone of our forecasting systems for years.  How could all these smart people be so wrong?”  Well, I really don’t know the answer to this, but it is still perfectly meaningless.  The way we assign the probability factor is completely wrong.  At best, we are measuring progress through the sales cycle (though I tend to doubt this), but we aren’t measuring the likelihood of a customer making a decision to choose our solution over the competition.

Consider these arguments:

Let’s assume we are competing against two other companies.  Each company uses the same CRM system, and they haven’t modified the “out of the box defaults–choose your favorite CRM System–Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM, SAP CRM, MS Dynamic, whatever.  All assign probabilities based on progress through the sales process.  Let’s assume we’re all completing our proposals to the customers and our CRM systems tell us that we are now at a 75% probability of winning this $1 Million deal.  Each of us (we and our 2 competitors) are committing to our managers and they are committing to their managers the expected value of the deal at $750,000—we are all saying that we have a 75% probability of winning.  Now I have to admit, I struggled through freshman statistics, but I did learn that 3 competitors can’t each forecast a 75% probability of winning a single event.  I learned that, if it was evenly weighted, each had a 33.33333% chance of winning.  I learned the sum of all the probabilities could never be over 1 or 100%.

Many sales executives call me asking for help in improving sales performance.  We talk about lots of things, I generally ask to look at their sales process and pipelines.  I see they are using the same methodology (let’s stick with our 25-50-75-100% example–you can substitute your own numbers if you want).  At some point in our conversation they say, we aren’t winning enough business.  I generally ask, “What’s your win rate—what percentage of the proposals you submit do you win?”  They are always embarrassed, they always say, it’s too low–I push for an answer, they give me a number.  It might be 60%, it might be 50%, or it might be 40%.  Generally, I believe them, even if it is just a “feeling” they have.  The point, however, they are using a 75% win rate at the way they are forecasting to the business.  See, if their system says, their weighting factor for all proposals presented is 75%–implicitly they are saying, “We win 75% of the opportunities we submit proposals on.”

Let me use one final example to show how meaningless this approach is, at the same time providing clues for an alternative approach that is more relevant.  Let’s say we are pursuing two different sales opportunities.  With both, we have completed proposals, both for $100K.  One is with a long time customer.  This customer likes us a lot, we are bidding a capacity upgrade–one that he really needs, one he has budget for and had planned spending the money.  There are no problems, the customer has said he wants to do business with us.  The second is with a prospect we have never done business with–well we did years ago, until we made him so unhappy that he chose our competitor in the last deal.  He reluctantly agreed to let us propose, though he far favors the competition.  Our solution doesn’t provide the performance levels of the competition and we are only 25% more expensive than the competitor he is currently doing business with.  Our forecasting system would require us to forecast both of those at the same probability–75%–or expected revenue of 75K for each opportunity.  On paper, both look exactly the same, and exactly as likely to produce business.

But in reality, we know the probability of winning the first deal is significantly higher than that of the second deal.  We have a justified solution that fits the customer requirements better than any others, and a customer that is very biased to doing business with us.  In the second case, we have everything going against us–at least from a customer perspective.  Yet our “weighting” process causes us to look at these as the same, presenting the same likelihood of winning the business to management and others.  This forecast, because it is so late in the cycle (after all we are 75% of the way through) sets all sorts of wheels in motion.  Procurement may be starting to buy parts for both sales, manufacturing might be scheduling the products into their manufacturing cycle, the CEO is presenting these shareholders as pieces of business we are likely to book—-OK, I went off the deep end and exaggerated a little, but you get the point. 

In reality, most sales people would probably say we are only going to win the first one and are highly unlikely to win the second deal.  Most sales people would “assign” a very high probability to the first deal and a low one to the second deal.  Their rationale would take into account things like the solution fit, the urgency of the customer, the business justification, the past relationship with the customer, and several other factors—things that are relevant to how customers make decisions, not based how far we are through the sales process.

This is the fatal flaw with the way we assign probabilities and do weighting currently.  We make an assignment, virtually independent of any consideration of what the customer thinks of our competition and us.  Instead, we use an artificial measure of what activities we have completed–regardless of whether they have had a positive or negative impact on the customer’s perception of us.

It’s no wonder why our forecasting is so poor, we are using criteria that are irrelevant to the customer and the decision they are making.  Yet virtually every organization I have encountered has used this approach in their forecasting, and virtually every CRM system, out of the box, encourages the same strategic error in the way they have set up their systems.  The approach and the metric is not only meaningless, it is misleading.

It’s time we change the approach to assigning probabilities and weighting our forecasts.  Weighted forecasting can be very good, but it has to be built on valid assumptions and strong foundations.  What if we changed the way we looked are assigning probabilities to consider things like urgency of customer need, our solution fit, the business justification, our current and past relationships with the account, the process the customer will use to make a buying decision or several other things.  If we considered these, we’d have a much more accurate view of what our business will be–opportunity by opportunity and across the entire pipeline.  We’d have a set of numbers, our management team would have more confidence in, and that we believe we can deliver.

It’s an easy shift that can have a profound impact.  I’ve touched on only a few items here, but the real secrets are in a short white paper and worksheet, I’ve written.  Send me an email dabrock@excellenc.com —unfortunately, you can’t put on the last e for excellence.  Ask me, “How can I increase my odds of winning?”  I’d be delighted to send you the white paper.

It seems to be human nature to take shortcuts.  We want results immediately, we don’t want to invest the effort normally required to achieve a goal.  We somehow think that we are the exceptions to the rule–while others have to make an effort, somehow we are different and can avoid all the work and effort to achieve the result.  In truth, sometimes shortcuts work.  They probably work often enough, that we continue to pursue them.

Shortcuts increase risk, very often profoundly.  Every day we see examples from industries, organizations, and individuals–BP wanted to get a well in production faster.  The finance industry wanted to make money faster, an athlete wanted to build performance levels faster–get caught taking drugs.  We see it every day, taking pills for weight loss/fitness, falsifying resumes, and the list goes on.

I wish it weren’t so, but too often, I see sales people succumbing to shortcuts.  We do it in little ways–we don’t do the research to approach a new prospect, we “wing it” on a sales call, we stretch the truth in talking about the capabilities of our products, the list goes on.  It works often enough, that we keep looking for shortcuts.  Managers stop listening, coaching, developing, organizations stop training, investing in tools.  We implement new software systems, thinking the system itself will produce results, forgetting the system implementation must be built on great process.

 We get caught up in the inertia we’ve created and don’t step back to look at what’s happening.  Surveys stating that 50% or more of sales people failing to meet their goals, customers who no longer trust us or want to see us, customers who won’t do business with us because we have failed to deliver on our commitments or their expectations…..the list goes on.

We confuse shortcuts with efficiency and effectiveness.  They are very different—taking shortcuts is about not doing what you know to be the right steps or actions to achieve success.  Shortcuts are about skipping these, jumping forward, consciously or unconsciously increasing risk.  No organization or individual can sustain high performance by constantly taking shortcuts.

Efficiency and effectiveness are different.  We can’t be top performers — on a sustained basis, without focusing on  efficiency and effectiveness.  Efficiency is about doing things in the shortest time possible.  Effectiveness is about doing the right things at the right time with the right people in the right way.  High performance in any field requires continued focus on efficiency and effectiveness.  Sustaining high performance is difficult work.  It demands constant focus on what you are doing, you need to look at how to improve, you must constantly redefined efficiency and effectiveness.  It requires discipline–it’s so easy to succumb to taking shortcuts.  It demands strength of character, particularly when all around you seem to be taking shortcuts.

High performers look at performance over time, they want to sustain and improve performance.  High performers don’t confuse shortcuts with efficiency and effectiveness.

What’s the foundation to your performance?  Are you taking shortcuts–constantly skipping the things you know you should be doing, but increasing risk of failure–for yourself, your company, your customer, the world?  Or are you focusing on constantly improving performance through improving effectiveness and efficiency?  There is a profound difference.

I know, I know, we use way too many sports metaphors to talk about selling.  But we really can learn a lot by watching high performing athletes in some of the most important sports events.This past weekend was packed with some of my favorite sports, the finals at Wimbledon, the World Cup, the start of the Tour de France, and toss in a few nice golf tournaments.  Watching them provoked some thoughts:

You can’t be successful without the support of your team:  Sales is a team sport–even if you sell by yourself.  the days of the “lone wolf” are gone (I’m not sure they ever existed).  Even if you look at the supposedly “individual sports.” like the singles finals at Wimbledon this weekend, none of those top performers could have gotten to the finals without the support of their team–trainers, coaches, practice partners, managers, and so forth.  It’s also interesting, the first thing these top athletes do is to thank their team (watch the interviews of Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal)!  They know their success is due to the support from their team.   Too often, I see sales people forgetting this.  They think their success is based on what they have done and ignore the team members.  Make sure you thank your team!

Top performers are respectful of their competitors:  Top athletes don’t underestimate their competition.  They study them, they watch them, they respect their capabilities and skills.  Regardless of how the competitor may be ranked, top athletes know their competitor earned the right to be there – they beat all other competitors.  Top athletes don’t denigrate their opponents, but focus on outPerforming them.  Great competitors raise the level of play and performance of everyone.  Sales people need to think about this as well.  Customers have chosen the alternatives they want to consider.  To be shortlisted by the customer means that each competitor is a serious contender for the business.  Don’t underestimate them, don’t discount them, leverage them to raise your own level of “play.”

Top performers don’t get to Wimbledon, the Tour de France, or the World Cup by accident:  All have a plan, strategies, they train, and compete.  Take the guys in the Tour de France.  They train constantly, riding thousands of miles a year in practice sessions.  They train for specific conditions they anticipate they will encounter—for example, yesterday’s difficult 3rd day on the cobblestones.  Lance Armstrong trained for days on the course, long before the race.  He knew the cobblestones could make the difference between winning and losing.  Alberto Contador hired a coach to help him master cobblestones.  Each day on the tour, the team gets together to review the plan, to evaluate alternative strategies, to discuss contingencies.  How do we deal with a break-away?  How do we position our sprinters at the finish line?  How do we pick up extra points along the way?  How will we keep our GC contender at the front of the peloton?  High performing sales people are the same.  They are constantly planning and developing strategies.  They look at their territories and accounts, developing plans to expand their business.  They think about each deal, looking at potential obstacles or problems, looking at areas where they can get advantage.  They study their customers and industries.  They constantly train and improve.  Finally, they are always out there competing, learning from their wins and losses.

Top performers have a plan–but adapt that plan to conditions:  The Tour Prologue presented an interesting challenge– a short, very fast course.  Everyone knew how they would ride it, how they would approach each turn, where they needed to slow down to stay on course.  Then on race day–rain, the course was wet and slippery, plans had to be adjusted.  Great sellers do the same, they have a plan and strategy, but as things play out they adjust their plan, responding to the customer’s needs.  While they shift and adjust the plan, the goal always remains the same–winning.

Great tools help, but ultimately it’s about your own personal performance.  Professional golfers have custom clubs–tuned to optimize their performance.  Each bike in the Tour uses the latest, best technology, costing over $10 K each.  At Wimbledon, players were using special strings, strung at very specific tensions to achieve better ball control.  They all use the best “tools” available to them because they help them perform better and more efficiently.  At the same time, to quote Lance, “It’s not the bike…”  Top sales people are the same.  They leverage sales tools to help them be more effective and productive.  Top performers know how to get advantage from their CRM systems, they know how to leverage social media.  In the end, however, they realize that while the tools are helpful, ultimately, it’s their own personal performance that causes them to win or lose.  (Notice also that top athletes don’t blame their equipment for their bad performance.)

On game-day, there are no do-overs, no-excuses:   As Tibor Shanto poses in his post, Sudden Death Sales, everything sale is like “sudden death,”  not in the literal sense, but when is ready to make their decision, you have to have played your best game.  You have to have left everything on the tennis court, football (soccer) field, or on the course.  For the deal, there is no second chance, you win or lose.  The best sales people are the same, in every sale, they are fully present, they compete to win, knowing there aren’t second chances, mulligans, or do-overs.  They realize, if they lose this opportunity, it may be some time before they have the opportunity to sell to this customer  again.

You have to bring your “A” game–each and every time you compete.  Competition is tough, customers are busy.  If you don’t bring your “A” game to each sales situation, you will have no chance of winning.  Competitors who should not win, can beat you if they are executing better than you.  For example, on his way to the finals at Wimbledon, Tomas Berdych, beat players ranked much higher than him.  He just executed better than each person that he defeated.  In selling we don’t have to have the best alternative, we just have to compete more strongly, work with the customer to demonstrate our offering is the best for the decision they are making.

Sometimes things aren’t fair:  The World Cup has been plagued with accusations of “bad calls.”  TV replays have shown some of them have, in fact been bad calls.  In spite of that, the final score is the final score.  Great athletes and teams don’t let a bad call distract them.  They put it behind them, adjust their game plans, and continue to compete as strongly as possible.  Sales is like that as well, sometimes things aren’t “fair.”  The customer may have “unfair expectations,”  we may not have exactly the product or support we need.  In spite of that, great professionals adjust their strategies and compete as best possible.

Luck helps, bad luck hurts, the game goes on:  There is always an element of luck in any competition (this will not be a discussion of making your luck).  Yesterday, despite all his training and preparation, Lance had a bad day, he had a flat.  It moved him back in the GC contention from one of the leaders to 18th with a seemingly insurmountable time difference to make up.  It was bad luck, I’m sure he and the RadioShack team are adjusting their strategies, finding ways to make up the time, examining possibilities of winning.  The same is true of sales, sometimes we are lucky, for reasons we can’t explain, things go our way.  Other times, it’s just the opposite.  Despite good or bad luck, top performers put it behind them, adjust their strategies, and move on.

Top athletes don’t blame others:  When they lose, the best players don’t blame others. Roger Federer–expected to be in the Wimbledon finals was beaten.  He had no excuses, while he was higher ranked than his opponent, on the day of the match, the opponent outplayed him.  Great sales people don’t blame others, they know that ultimately, they are accountable.  It is their responsibility to put the strongest plans in place.  It is their responsibility to manage their team to present the best solution.  If they lose, they don’t make excuses, they don’t blame others.

Finally, top athletes ALWAYS thank their customers:  Win or lose, top athletes thank the fans–after all they are paying the bills.  Win or lose, top sales people always thank their customers.  They thank them for the business.  They thank them for being given the opportunity to compete.

Choose your favorite sport, study the top performers in the sport.  Adapt what they do to to your own job and practice of selling.  Your performance will improve, you’ll be on the path to being a top performer.

For the past several weeks, there has been an interesting saga going on in the blog world.  A gentleman named Michael J. Roman has created a great stir. 

It would be fantastic if it were about provocative ideas and interesting points of view—in fact it is, the problem is they aren’t his ideas or his points of view, though he presents them as his.  See the controversy he has created is about his lack of respect for other people’s hard work, his disdain for copyright law, and ultimately his disdain of his audience.

Michael plagiarizes the best ideas and blogs from numerous well respected bloggers.  He goes further by putting his own copyright on the materials declaring them as his own original works.  He stands proudly behind a cloak of “integrity.”  When he was caught by my friend, Jonathan Farrington, he immediately offered his sincere apology, laying the blame on an over zealous “creative director.”  In his apology to Jonathan, he states, “Any unethical behavior under my leadership will NOT be tolerated and I appreciate you (and others) bringing this to my attention.”  He goes on to say he will terminate the offending employee.  He concludes his letter:   “Again, you have my most sincere apologies for this unacceptable act on my employee’s part, which in turn, is a direct reflection on me.”

Just a few days after that apology, he’s back to his old tricks, copying and plagiarizing content from great bloggers.  As many of my friends protest this, apparently Michael has once again taken his blog down.  But we know people like Michael, he will re-appear doing the same thing, perhaps under a different persona.

Michael, however, provides us a great case study.  He declares his core values as Passion, Balance, Integrity, and Expertise.  Declaring these values doesn’t make them so!  Demonstrating these values every day in every interaction is what counts!  It’s how we understand the real measure of a person.  It’s how we establish trust and how we build our reputation.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of Michael J. Roman’s out there.  Their behavior seeks to drag everyone to the lowest levels.  Their behavior drags down the standards and reputations of their companies.  In Michael’s case, it is Modis IT Staffing–knowing Michael represents them would cause me to be concerned about doing business with them.  Do they have the same “high” standards as Michael?  Do they have the same ethics?  I’m sure they don’t sink to the depths that Michael does, but it causes people to doubt them.

Ultimately, our reputations are not judged by what we declare–regardless of how loudly we declare them, our reputations are developed by how we live and demonstrate what we stand for.  If we have high personal standards, we surround ourselves with others that live by high personal standards and shun the bottom feeders like Michael J. Roman.

A number of my fellow bloggers have written outstanding posts about this situation.  I encourage you to read them, I’ve put the links for several below, I know I’m missing a number, my apologies:

Skip Anderson:  The Continuing Saga of Michael J. Roman and “His” Blog  and The Scourge of the Blogosphere: Plagiarism and Michael J. Roman.

Jonathan Farrington:  Michael J. Roman; Plagiarism; the Apology; Final Thoughts

Jill Konrath: “There Are No Shortcuts to Success”

Wendy Weiss: “Stop Thief!”

Dave Kurlan: “Jiffy Lube Magic, Sales Adaptability and Plagiarism”

Kelley Robertson: “When Imitation Is NOT the Best Form of Flattery”

Skip Anderson: “The Scourge of the Blogosphere: Plagiarism and Michael J. Roman”

Tibor Shanto: “Please Don’t Steal This Post!”

Leanne Hoagland-Smith: “Is Plagiarism Worth It in Blogging, Article Marketing Social Media Universe?”

Ken Thoreson: “When Plagiarism Is NOT Flattering”

Niall Devitt: “When Plagiarism Is Not Flattering”

Nancy Bleeke: “Being Yourself in a Transparent World”

(Thanks to Skip and Jonathan for links/pictures/etc.)

Today, I am a keynote speaker as part of Microsoft’s  and Focus.com’s Dynamic Business Week Series.  My session is at 10:00 am PDT, join me if you can.

The job of the sales manager is very difficult.  It requires constant juggling of priorities and management of contradictions.  The presentation focuses on 1o areas a manager must pay attention to to achieve the highest levels of performance:

1. Customers are changing the way they buy, are you changing the way you sell?
2. Is your sales process current, are you using it?
3. Are you creating value in your customer’s buying process?
4. Do your people use the selling process as a personal productivity tool?
5. CRM is for your sales people, not for you…but once they are using it, you get tremendous insight.
6. Metrics count, personal and organizational.
7. Coaching is critical, every day!
8. Protect your people from the organization.
9. Beware of the sales manager “Superman Syndrome.”
10. Your job is to get things done through your people.
11. As a bonus:  Keep your balance, you have to constantly juggle customers, coaching and people development, business strategy, business management, performance management, processes, tools, training, navigating the organization.  It’s easy to lose your way.

If you would like a free annotated copy of the full presentation just click on the link:  High Performance Sales, 10 Things Managers Must Worry About.

Sales management is a tough job, but it’s very rewarding when everything comes together and you see your team performing at the highest levels possible.  You become unbeatable!

Sales managers spend a lot of time talking about metrics.  They measure everything–some good, some over measured, but some micromanaged.  There’s a lot of focus in the Sales 2.0 world about metrics, but again, most of the discussion is how to help sales managers.  It’s time to shift the discussion to sales professionals–individual contributors.

Yes, we’re all used to being measured, that’s part of what makes us sales people.  At any point in time, we know (or pretend to know), where we are in our quota attainment.  We always focus on “The Number.”  Making the number is the end game, it’s important to all of us, it’s how our bonus and commissions are calculated and how our performance is evaluated.  In many cases, not making the number may mean that we have to look some place else for a job.

There are a richer set of metrics, though, that are important for every sales person to have–just for themselves.  Each sales person needs his own scorecard to look at how they are performing and to identify areas in which they should improve.  Each sales person needs to have a mix of metrics–we can’t get past the trailing metrics–The Number– but we need to have some forward looking metrics, to help us assess whether we are headed in the right direction and will make our number.  Forward looking metrics help us identify issues in time to be able to do something about our performance.

In looking at building a scorecard of personal metrics, I think metrics in four key areas are critical:  Business management, Operational, Customer growth/relationships,  and Personal Development.

Business management metrics are those that we are most used to.  These are generally focused around The Number.  It could be orders, revenue, profit, attainment against quota.  The numbers could be measured on a monthly, quarterly, or year to date basis—in some industries even on a daily basis.  I won’t spend much time on these, we know all about this and our managers remind us every day.

Operational metrics.  These are critical, they focus on what we are doing now, helping us understand whether we are doing enough of the right things to make the number.  Often, these can be activity metrics–how many calls we make a day, how many meetings we have a week.  I tend to think activity metrics are important for every sales person.  For example, I know that if I don’t have at least 10 telephone meetings a week with new potential clients, I won’t make my number next year.  Regardless, of what I am doing, where I am, I have to make those calls and have those conversations.  There are a lot of other important operational metrics including conversion/win rates, sales cycle time, pipeline/funnel health, deal velocity, average transaction value, etc.  There are dozens, all potentially useful.  But what’s important is to identify the few that are most critical to you in predicting how you will perform and whether you are on target or need to take corrective actions.  Focus on identifying 3-4, set some targets and measure your attainment against those targets.

Customer growth/relationship metrics are also critical.  These are sometimes more difficult to measure.  They also may tend to focus on longer term measures of success, but if you don’t focus on them now, they will impact your ability to continue to grow your business–whether it’s within your territory, account, industry, or markets.  These metrics may focus on account development—how many new executive relationships have we developed in a key account, how many new projects have we started or opportunities have we identified in divisions we have never done business with.  They may focus on territory development–how many new accounts are we generating; on market development–how many new applications or new segments are we developing.  They may focus on customer satisfaction, either in some of the classic ways, or numbers of new references, or numbers of referrals/introductions.  In developing your own business–whether it’s your territory or your personal network, customer relationship metrics help you establish goals and strategies for growth.

Finally, and most often overlooked, are personal development metrics.  Top sales professionals are always learning and developing.  The best establish personal development goals to keep their edge and to be out in front of their peers and competitors.  It may be building new skills, it may be learning how to use new tools, it may be learning new applications.  Set some goals to improve yourself.  There are some obvious one’s like take some sales training classes, read some books on selling, learn how to adopt your CRM system to be a powerful tool for your own productivity.  Look at development outside of just sales skills, develop better business management skills, learn the latest issues in procurement, take a writing or public speaking class, set some personal fitness goals, learn another language.  Consider personal development through volunteer work.  Focus on your development not only as a sales professional, but as a business professional, a human being and a contributor to the local and global community.  These goals are ciritcal to your long term personal success and accomplishment.

Yes, your managers have goals for you–we have to achieve those goals.  But each sales person should have their own personal scorecard.  Each person should establish goals and measurements to assure they are performing to the highest levels thaty can–and growing as much as possible.  The funny thing I’ve discovered, my goals are always tougher than those that management sets for me.  If I achieve my goals, I always pass those established by the organization on the way.