Salesforce Management

We've all heard that you can't motivate others. Motivation by definition comes from within and our job as sales managers is to create an environment where your sales force will motivate themselves, right?

First, all people are motivated. They may be motivated to work hard or to stay in bed. They may be motivated to help customers or just get commissions. Our job is to identify and reward those motivations that produce behaviors we want to see repeated.

Second, techniques can be learned to teach our sales force to set the proper motivating climate so that the client can buy. Then the client will do the rest on his own. We also know that more than the proper climate is necessary to make a sale. We need to draw out the client's needs, amplify those needs in some cases, and then show the client all the benefits he will receive in satisfying those needs.

The same holds true for your sales team. Merely creating the proper environment will not cause motivation to run rampant. We must, by design, get inside our people's heads and find out what that internal motivation is. Amplify the need or needs and then show them exactly how they can achieve their goals by simultaneously accomplishing our (the company's) goals.

So, how do we go about getting inside their heads? We hold career interview. A career interview is often confused with the performance appraisal; however, they differ in many ways. The purpose of a career interview is to help the employee grow, not to assess past performance.

Basic compensation is usually not changed as a result of the career interview, but the way the compensation package is structured may change. This is a result of the salesperson telling you they respond to compensation in a different form; i.e., commission versus salary or bonus. The total compensation probably won't change.

The sales manager puts very little, if anything, in writing and does not keep formal notes in an employee's file regarding a career interview.

The sales manager should interview each sales person individually. If there are assistant or associate sales managers or team leaders, they should individually interview each person in their group or team.

Career interviews should take place at least once every six months, preferably once a quarter or anytime there is a significant change in either the company or in the individual's life that may cause a change in goals, objectives or attitudes. Some examples might include: a promotion, a shift in territories, introduction of a new product line, a death in the family, divorce, birth of a child, marriage, or a company merger.

New employees should be interviewed three times in the first six months. The first interview should take place within the first two to three weeks. By this time they will have begun to encounter certain difficulties or roadblocks within the company. Some examples are back orders on certain products, competition in a product area or territory, or difficulties with peers or management. At this point, the employee will look for some positive input from you and a career interview can be the perfect format for putting this employee back on track.

The second time a new employee should be interviewed is at the end of the first 90 days. At this point the newness of the job will be gone. They will then have a feel for their strengths and weaknesses in their new position. It is important at this point to plug them into a well-organized training program to keep them growing.

The third career interview for an employee should take place after six months. This is when they have the potential to become dangerous. They feel they know it all. At this point, it is important that you help them identify their long-term goals with the company, identify some areas where they need to keep growing, and let them know how important they are to the company and to its overall growth and profit.

The career interview should take place in a setting that is private. If we are successful, the employee will open up and share some innermost thoughts. It is important that there are no interruptions which can inhibit a free one-to-one interchange. It is often helpful to go to a restaurant, or someplace outside the office, where the possibility of interruptions is diminished and the employee feels confident that other employees will not overhear.

The atmosphere should be semi-formal. Even though this is a management/employee interview, the purpose is to help the employee to grow and prosper with the company. Therefore, openness is to be encouraged.

It is important that the manager not take notes during the career interview since this may discourage free discussion and can be distracting to both the manager and the salesperson. It is very difficult to listen and take notes at the same time. The manager's purpose here should be to understand the employee and not be concerned with writing.

Whenever possible, try to sit at a 90 degree angle from the person, not across from or beside them. This positioning will create a consultative atmosphere instead of opposition or a buddy-buddy situation.

In order for the career interview to be successful, the interviewee must be relaxed. If the interview takes place in an office instead of a restaurant, you may want to let the employee or the salesperson know that it's O.K. to smoke, have a cup of coffee, put their feet up or do whatever else might be appropriate to help loosen up.

The other crucial variable is that both people must be totally honest with each other. During the career interview, you will be asked questions that you would prefer not to answer. If you withhold data from your people in a career interview, you will damage the trust bond and defeat the purpose of the entire interview.

So, how do we start the interview? What questions do we ask? Your introduction might go something like this: "John, what we are trying to gain my chatting today is...."

• Insert one or all of the following benefits:
• To let you know how important you are to the organization.
• To let you know where you fit into the organization.
• To find out where the organization fits into your life.
• To get your views on management policies or products.
• To gain some important feedback from you on our customer service practices and on the kind of job we're doing serving our clients.
• To find out how you feel about your fellow salespeople and your sales manager.
• To find out how you would like your career to develop with the organization.
• To talk about your ideas for improving the organization.
• To discuss your opportunities for growth and ways that you can make yourself more valuable to the organization.
• To keep communication lines open and to get to know each other better so that we can perform better together.
• To build a better team.

The more minds we have going in one direction the better off we will be.  The following are some sample questions and things to look for in the responses.

1. What is it about your job that you like?  Always start on a positive note. This will help the interviewee and open up. 
2. What is it about your job that you don't like? We want to identify the area of the job that is most difficult or frustrating. Is it the customers, the product itself, management, the environment, or what? Is there a trend?
3. How do you feel you can improve in your job in the next 30 days? How can you get more sales?  These are short-term goal orientation questions which test whether they have thought about becoming better in their job or whether they're stagnant.
4. Why do you work here? Hopefully the answer is more than just money or security. This question will lead us to the major internal motivators that keep them working on a day-to-day basis. Encourage them to give you more than one answer since this list will help us identify and rank the motivators that keep them working.
5. What would you like to achieve as an employee here in the next year? Again, we are checking goal orientation and attitude to see if they've thought ahead that far. Also, we can identify in which capacity they see themselves in the near future. Together, you can make some plans to move them towards that goal.
6. If you could pick any job that you would like to do here, which one would you pick and why? We ask this to see if they have aspirations to go in a particular direction. Do they want to move up? If so, do they want to move up because they'd have less work to do. Or, because they want more responsibility? Perhaps they would like to move laterally into a different department, a different product line or a different territory. We also need to investigate these needs.
7. If you could pick any person in the company that you feel you cannot get along with, who would it be? Would you mind sharing your feelings with me as to why you feel you can't get along with that person or why you're having difficulty getting along with that person? With these questions, you may have gotten indications that you have a manager that does not get along well with any of the salespeople. In that case, the salesperson may have a problem with the manager. Or, you may find that you have a manager that gets along well with most people but is having difficulty with this individual. This indicates a problem on this salesperson's part. Or, you may find that the sales side of the house has difficulty getting along with the service side or shipping or one of the other departments. This can lead to a dangerous condition called sub-optimization where one department acts in its own best interest and causes the company as a whole to become less profitable.
8. Why do you feel that you're an asset to our company? Here we are checking to find out what they feel has been their greatest contribution. Hopefully, this will allow them to open up and be positive about themselves. It is their opportunity to toot their own horn. Notice that we've asked some pretty heavy and perhaps even negative questions and now we want to pick up the tone and the pace a little bit. This question often can give us an opportunity to give some well-deserved positive strokes for a contribution that may have been overlooked due to our busy schedule.
9. How much time do you spend each week studying or practicing to improve your abilities? What are you studying now? We want to let the employee or the salesperson know that studying, practicing, and constantly improving. We do not want stagnant salespeople in this company. This is their opportunity to let us know what they plan to do. Then, of course, you must follow up in the next 30, 60, or 90 days so that we can keep a handle on where they are now and where they're going. At this point, we can sit down and write some goals for the employee's benefit to show them how meeting their sales goals can help them get what they want from the company. As we teach them how to become more valuable to us, we also teach them how to become more valuable to themselves. Don't ignore personal growth during this phase of the interview. It is important that we encourage the best people we can, not just the best salespeople.

These questions are just a few of the possible ones that could be asked. Feel free to add your own or to build on responses that the employee gives you. This is your interview and your opportunity to get to know your employee better. Don't make it so formal and so structured that you lose sight of the purpose.

After the interview, take a few minutes to debrief yourself and take some notes for yourself so that you can follow up and help the employee to achieve his or her goals.

Here are some review questions to ask yourself:

What was the overall tone of the interview? Don't look at a particular response to an individual question, but get an overall feel for how the interview went.

Do you feel that the interviewee is in the right career? Based on your conversations, do you feel that the person is doing what he or she really wants to be doing?

How well does he or she fit into your organization? Each organization has its own particular personality. An individual may or may not fit that personality. This is not a reflection of the individual as good or bad, but simply different.

Does he or she like the organization? Are they comfortable here? How is his or her attitude? This is a critical variable, especially the person represents your company to your customers.

Do you feel that you have a better understanding of what makes him or her tick? If you don't, you probably need to spend more time with this individual, getting to know the nuances of their personality.

Do you have a better idea of what he or she wants from life, from your organization, and from you? Herein lies the real key to using the career interview as a motivator. If you have a very clear picture of what they're looking for, it shouldn't be too difficult to mesh the company's goals with their goals.

Do you feel that since you now know your salesperson better, you'll be in a better position to get his or her help on the tougher projects? There are times when every sales manager has to call on his sales team to perform above and beyond the call of duty: during a sales blitz, end of the year push, or new product introduction. If you've done a good job with your career interview, you should have built some strength into your relationship which will help you during these higher stress times.

Do you think that he or she will now feel more comfortable talking to you in the future when things aren't going well? There's nothing worse than having a salesperson with difficulties who feels uncomfortable talking to the sales manager. It's crucial that the person comes to you immediately when things aren't going well. Again, the career interview should have helped you open the communication channels.

How do you think he or she will view you as a boss now? Better than before? In your opinion, does he or she now feel important to the organization and to you? Salespeople usually have a very high ego strength. One reason for high turnover is that they just don't feel needed or important to their current organization. What is another organization offers them an increase in compensation and other goodies to join their force? A few well placed strokes by you will produce loyalty and decrease turnover.

Some keys to success:

• Concentrate on strengths. There are two ways to have the tallest building in town. One is to build yours higher. The second way is to tear all the others down. By building on strengths you can turn your people into skyscrapers.

• Spend 90% of the interview focusing on positives and planning on the future; i.e., "What can I do to help you become a more effective salesperson?"

• Focus on performance, not personalities. If this particular person is not one of your favorite salespeople, don't assume that you can't do anything about it. If you'll focus on their performance, focus on their goals and ignore personalities, you'll find some significant increases in input.

• Use your people. Demand excellence and high output. Make sure that they have the tools. Salespeople enjoy the challenge of high goals, so don't be afraid to ask them to reach.

• Don't assume someone can't do something just because they haven't done it before. If one of your people identifies a goal that may seem out of reach, or for which they lack experience, put together a game plan to help them get there. You'll be surprised what they can accomplish if that's what they really want.

• Put superstars on future projects. Put average people on yesterday's problems. This encourages everyone to grow. If you've got some problem with accounts, why not put not put some of your average people on those problem accounts and let them grow in the process? In the meantime, you can put your superstars on projects such as opening new markets, or concentrating on prospects that the average people haven't been able to crack.

• Take a genuine interest in your people. It's been said over and over again. Your people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

• Spend the time to protect your investment. If you add up training, recruiting and opportunity costs, your investment in one salesperson can run anywhere from $5,000.-$50,000. Take the time to do an effective career interview as often as necessary.

• Respond to the needs identified in the career interview. If you ask your team what they need to become more effective and then don't do anything to bring that about, then they will soon learn that there is no point in investing their time in the career interview.

• Turn your organizational chart upside down. Realize that the only reason there is a sales manager is because there are salespeople who have needs. It is your responsibility to service them. They are your customers. Everything you do should reflect this. Your role in the organization is to provide your team with everything they need to be as effective as they can be. The best way to motivate your sales team and to get what the organization wants is to help them get what they want.

• There's an old story about a dog food company that went to great lengths to do market research to find out what kind of packaging would be most effective in selling their dog food. After months of research they came up with a package design that turned out to be very effective. Consumers bought that dog food by the ton. Then, a funny thing happened. Shortly thereafter, sales dropped dramatically. No one could figure out why. After months of research they finally concluded that although the consumers bought the dog food because of the package, the dogs simply would not eat the contents. They made a fundamental error. They forgot to ask the dogs.

Instead of reading 100 management and marketing journals trying to figure out how to get more out of your sales team, spend the next week doing career interviews with your sales force. They'll give you all the answers you need to increase productivity, performance and profits.