How These Four Sales Management Tips Can Reverse the 20-80 Productivity Rule For Your Sales Team

The 20/80 rule (Pareto's Principle) abounds in life and in business. This is a pretty scary statistic as noted by Tom Stein in a posting at the AllBusiness website specific to sales. In his article, he provided five (5) steps to build a powerful and effective sales team where the goal to increase sales is realized. Now what would happen if the sales management could move some of those under performing salespersons in the 80% bucket into the 20% bucket without losing the productivity of the currently performing to over performing individuals? For this to happens requires these steps to be taken: First, referring to Tom Collins in Good to Great, it is critical to have the right sales people in the right seats in the right bus. When you understand their decision making styles to their talents (strengths) you can not only achieve great performance appraisals, but have a cohesive team where all members are rowing with the same energy toward exactly the same target. In other words, you have removed the slackers from your team and have helped the under performing to work smarter and not harder. Second, integrating a proven goal achievement process that unites the following: Personal goals Organizational goals Metrics Alignment to other departments The use of the same tool (goal worksheet) ensures sales goals are achieved as well as improves overall communication. Such improvements only strengthen another inherent weakness facing more organizations and that is consistent execution of strategic goals and initiatives. Sales Training Coaching Tip: Many individuals fail to achieve their own personal goals so how they achieve organizational ones? Third, reviewing the overall organization is necessary as well. The sales department does not work in isolation. Other functions and departments of the firm must all work together. Unfortunately, sometimes the inability to increase sales is just as much about internal obstacles such as structure, processes, rewards and other employees as it is about the individual performance of each salesperson. Sometimes it may also help to take a proven organizational assessment aligned to accepted criteria such as Baldrige. Fourth, results based, not competency based, sales training is also required. This approach to developing the skill sets of your sales team leverages everyone's talents. (See Tip #1). When a competency based approach is used, the strengths of individual team members are devalued because a now accepted competency has been created. This also creates an essentially "more hope to" false philosophy which again is not the best performance approach. When organizations invest the time to truly develop their sales teams including providing effective sales training, assessing for decision making styles and talents and incorporating a proven goal achievement process, then they can move away from the 20/80 principle. This action would increase overall productivity and realize the goal to increase sales. Now doesn't that make more sense? Free sales skills assessment by Results Sales Coach Leanne Hoagland-Smith who helps with sales coaching, leadership to sales management development. Schedule your free strategy session at 219.759.5601 Central Time. Are you Captain Wing It or Captain Focus It when it comes to your business and sales behaviors? Learn how to work smarter not harder by having a simple written sales action plan. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leanne_Hoagland-Smith

Growing Your Business Profits

Grow your business profits using dollars you have already spent on inventory! Today is a great time to revisit the idea of bartering! With organized barter more automated and efficient, it is a terrific time to take advantage of the increased buying and spending power in addition to the cost savings to operate your business. Many retail stores are closing their doors due to the lack of business and cash flow. Most retail stores believe that by slashing their prices they will cause more customers and traffic to the store. This might be true for that moment, but isn€™t the real objective to gain NEW customers and LOYAL customers? If a store has the inventory and capacity to increase sales without it affecting their hard cost of doing business, barter is a win/win situation. Barter customers bring other cash customers when they talk about the experience. While barter can drive new customers to your store, the new customers can tell their friends and family about their experience and you can gain cash business at the same time you are moving that inventory or filling excess capacity. Example: A business or retail store owns inventory and it is moving slower then expected or needed. Meanwhile the business owner has some immediate business needs that are critical to their business. If the business owner can market their inventory through an online barter website and attract new customers to purchase some of the items for full retail using barter credits, the business owner can then purchase the items for the business using that revenue rather than spending new money! Some examples might be new store signage or printing and advertising! The idea situation is the use the new barter revenue to advertise and bring in additional cash paying customers. Don€™t forget that your new barter clients will be loyal to you and also help promote your business as long as they continue to feel like valued customers and receive excellent value and service from your staff! Barter clients should be a welcome addition to your business and treated as friends. Remember they are also business owners and understand why you are bartering and want to help you grow and prosper in your business also. Cost of Barter: You might wonder what joining a barter organization might cost and also the fees associated with bartering. The fees to join or membership costs vary from each trade exchange. Most exchanges charge anywhere from $195.00 €" $495.00 and up as a membership application fee and monthly fees range from 0-$20.00 per month. Trade service fees on transactions vary from 10% trade or 5%- 8% cash on each transaction. The thing to remember is that you are paying only a transaction fee on what you purchase or sell. In addition consider that many times you can apply for a line of barter credit and spend into the system before you even make your first barter sale! Your local trade broker will also assist you by bringing you new customers to pay the trade credit line back! What credit card company or bank will do all that for you? In fact a great trade exchange will establish a barter budget for you to follow so that you aren€™t taking too many trade credits above what you will be spending in the system. In the barter economy your products and services are more important than your credit score. You can use your inventory to secure a barter loan and make improvements to your business! Consider how leveraging money you have already spent into advertising or maintenance or other ongoing expenses like printing, or landscaping, repairs or equipment maintenance or even purchasing new equipment can add additional profit and cutting costs to your bottom line. Consider how leveraging money you have already spent into advertising or maintenance or other ongoing expenses. Increase sales and profits with money you already spent! Whether you are a service related business or retail store you can benefit by increasing your customer base by up to 10 €" 15% and reducing overhead costs by spending that new found revenue back into your business and YES even consider giving yourself a raise in barter revenue to spend on personal needs. Turn that downtime or excess inventory into what you need or want for yourself and your business. I encourage any business that has a vanishing commodity such as advertising space, hotel rooms, empty seats or room in a cafe or restaurant to use barter to capture that potential lost revenue and turn it into future purchases and increased sales! Need more information on how Bartering can add to your bottom line profits? Ask The Barter Coach! Kathleen (Kathy) Smart is the President and CEO of SmarterIdeas Inc. http://smarterideas.com, and one of the founding principals with the International Business Academies Limited, http://ibalnet.com, an Atlanta Georgia based LLC Kathleen has had over 26 years of experience in helping business owners succeed. Kathleen hosts her own internet based radio programs where she interviews local business owners and individuals who can bring inspiration, information and education to entrepreneurs and business owners. Over the past year she has interviewed, teacher of the year, Ron Clark, Blue Man Group and many others. Her show is designed and dedicated to educate and inform entrepreneurs and business owners with information that can give them the tools that can help them turn that corner in their life or business. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathleen_Smart