SalesForceXP magazine: May/June 2007 SalesU: Glub, Glub, Glub

SALESU

Glub, Glub, Glub

The sales team is sinking in your guest speaker’s muck

by Paul Nolan

Glub, Glub, Glub Dirk Beveridge, a sales consultant, author and speaker, has a message for sales managers – the same group that he calls on for speaking and training opportunities: Some of you guys couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.

So much for not biting the hand that feeds him.

In truth, he wasn’t quite that blunt, but he was candidly critical about the lack of vision – and supervision – that some companies fail to provide their sales teams. “A lot of small and midsized companies don’t manage their business for extraordinary results. They don’t manage their business to dominate their marketplace. They don’t manage their business to make a real difference in the lives of their employees,” he says.

Beveridge cringes at the time, money and energy that companies repeatedly waste by bringing in a speaker for a 90-minute pep talk during a sales meeting and hoping that it will drive long-term change. “It doesn’t work, it has never worked, and it will never work,” he says.

How Committed Are You?

“In order for any training to take hold, management must have a clear, meaningful and even bold vision for where they’re taking their organization,” says Dirk Beveridge. These indicators help management check its own level of commitment:

• Consistency in terms of the message from management and how it jibes with the sales system that’s in place. Management has the obligation to define how the company is going to market and to provide a customized sales process to do so.

• A cumulative approach to competent job instruction. It’s not only about what sort of sales meeting you have, it’s how your plan blends meetings, online learning, internal newsletters and other forms of communication. These are the tools that build knowledge with every single touch.

• Coaching is crucial. What did management do to follow up its last meeting? Hold people accountable to the knowledge that you’ve imparted.

• Collaboration reinforces teamwork. Your salespeople have a lot of good ideas. Find ways to allow them to share best practices.

If you really want to inspire a sales team to evolve – to rise above the competition and drive extraordinary results – the first place that management should look is in the mirror, Beveridge says.

“The day management makes a commitment to a sustainable and consistent and cumulative effort, I guarantee you that’s the start of making lasting growth happen in an organization.”

It’s also likely the end of hiring quick-fix artists – those “Let me tell you a story” types who have more entertainment value than educational.

“Is there a role for the keynote presentation? The answer is yes. But the No. 1 role of a keynote has got to be to support management’s direction and management’s vision,” Beveridge says. If you haven’t got the vision for a guest speaker to support, then you’re not ready for the guest speaker.

Beveridge says he has “reengineered” his business over the past two years to reinforce this concept. When he is asked to make half-day or even 90-minute presentations, he limits himself to addressing one or two specific strategies that can help salespeople get better.

He emphasizes that no matter how much time he’s allowed to work with a client, each program is customized to that client’s industry and their means of going to market. A business should expect as much from any outside trainer or speaker.

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May/June 2007 SalesForceXP magazine.

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