In this issue:

• Anatomy of a Successful Retail Sales Organization by Tom Piscitelli
• Company Health Check by Mark Sims
• Accelerate! Upcoming Sales Training Session Starts May 8!

Anatomy of a Successful Retail Sales Organization

Very few companies have a sales organization that consistently produces profitable growth. Owners often blame the shortcomings on high-maintenance sales people who grow lazy and demand more. Sales people are inclined to blame it on owners who don’t support a sales-driven culture that produces what the sales person promises.

Those companies that do create extraordinary sales success have a number of things in common. The following will describe a long-term client that has profitably grown from $4M to $20M in just 10 years and has done so by consciously following these critical guidelines.

Sales Culture
Are sales people as respected as any other co-worker? Too often they are ridiculed or demeaned for those very characteristics that create effective sales professionals. Does the CSR understand and appreciate how important her appointment setting skills are at preparing the customer for a professional sales call. Do the installers see themselves as responsible for fulfilling what the sales person has promised and what the homeowner expects from their investment? Most importantly, does management including the owner publicly praise everyone for the vital part they play in the entire sales process?

Sales Management
Pick your favorite team in any sport and consider how they create success. They have managers, they create a plan, they choose the best players, they train them, they practice constantly, everything is measured, they are individually coached for improved performance. After all of this, when they produce results they make a lot of money, and if they don't produce results they are replaced.  Skip any of these important steps and the entire team’s results are negatively impacted. Sales organizations need leadership and management that is accountable to continuous performance and improvement.

Defined Processes
Many owners seemingly ignore the root cause of complaints from installers who claim to receive inadequate information from sales people. Owners shrug off their responsibility with this common issue by paying sales people after all job costing is done and reducing sales commissions when there are labor or material cost overruns. Another method is to chargeback any cost overruns directly to the sales person’s commission. How can this be motivating for a sales person? The solution that I’ve facilitated numerous times is to get managers, installers and sales people in a room for as long as it takes to create the documents the installers need and approve for the sales people to complete. Once that is done it is the sales person’s responsibility to accurately and completely provide all of the required information. Failure to do so is now a management issue and the consequence will discourage the sales person from continuing to provide inadequate information. Problem solved.

Accountability
A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Every co-worker has an important responsibility and most are connected in some way with the sales process. When an individual is poorly trained or incapable of doing their job, it’s management’s responsibility to get them prepared to perform or replacement them. But when an individual chooses to cut corners that must be dealt with immediately.

Performance Based Compensation
Salaried sales people don’t produce the same results they would if on full commission. Some owners want to pay a partial salary so they can “control” what the sales person does, such as requiring him to be in the office to answer phones, order materials or stage jobs. Why would you take a resource that can create revenue and have him doing administrative work? On the other hand, if a prospective sales person wants a salary, that is information enough, in my view, that he is not the sort of person who will create opportunities and follow through until he is successful.

Want to put these principles to work in your business? Call me… I’ll be happy to help.

Good Selling,
Tom

We live and survive in an industry with some pretty strong ups and downs caused by many variables, both inside and outside our control.  As a result, it is imperative, so we can manage our company and not have it manage us, that we constantly monitor the health of the company. 

Given this:

• What are the things you need to frequently pay attention to in order to help ensure your company is healthy and heading in the right direction?
• How can you generate the desired company report card as frequently as you would like to review the information?

General Company Health
Other than your MONTHLY Operating Statement and Balance Sheet, the best quick report card on the company’s health is Revenue Year-to-Date compared to the Previous Year-to-Date.  If possible this should be broken out by department or business segment as it makes sense for your business.
 

Add to this, a 12-month Revenue Trend, to show if you are trending up or down.  This line will trend up and down during the year based on the seasonality of your market, unless your overall growth rate can overcome seasonality effects.

Service Department Health
A quick snapshot of your Service Business, to see if it is heading where you want it to go, needs to reflect more than just Revenue.  Tracking the Number of Calls and Value per Call Year-to-Date compared to last Year-to-Date is critical for resource planning and productivity measurement.  To get an accurate view of things, each Service Call, whether or not it is billable, warranty, or a preventative maintenance agreement commitment, should be closed with the appropriate assigned value so you can objectively evaluate the Value per Call.  To me, there is no such thing as a zero-dollar completed service call.  Someone or some department should be paying for it!  If your Service Techs are selling, then track Converted Estimates vs. Open Estimates and the Conversion Rate.

Maintenance Agreements are a critical part of any service business and your overall growth strategy, but need to be evaluated with a different set of criteria.   It is critical to pay attention to the growth in Active Agreements and the minimization of Expired Agreements from year-to-year.  Revenue alone does not paint the entire picture so that you can make necessary adjustment to your strategies and tactics.

Sales Department Productivity
In my article a few weeks ago, I covered the importance of and the need to track Sales Leads.  If you did not get a chance to read this, click here to view it on our Facebook page.  The key thing to pay attention with the Sales Department is the number of Sales Leads YTD compared to Last YTD.  The ultimate measurement of Sales Productivity is the Dollars Sold per Sales Lead. 

How can you have this invaluable data available at the push of a button?
Unless you are using an integrated, seamless operating system like TRUST PRO online to help run your business, this can be a challenge.  As long as you are tracking and logging the data, it is possible to have someone pull this data from multiple sources so you can have a company overview to help you manage… but it would not be easy and it would not happen at the push of a button.  TRUST PRO online allows you to view this information anytime at just the push of a button from data that is accumulated seamlessly through normal day-to-day operational activity by your organization.

To learn more about how you can make your company “unconsciously competent” for only around a dollar per day per user, click here to go to our website where you can click on any of the “Sign up for a free demo” banners.  Or if you like, contact me directly at mark@trustproonline.com or 612-284-5024 ext. 100.

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