Month: April 2020

There’s no doubt that we’re in the middle of some tough times – a raging pandemic, a downturned economy, rising unemployment…  Yes, we can all agree that times aren’t the best right now.

But speaking as someone who has served as a salesperson, sales coach, sales manager, and CEO, I can say that we’ve faced tough times before. And to get through the dark times, we do two things. First, we focus on what we can control and change it for the better. And second, we highlight our accomplishments to carry us to better times.  As I’ve coached my team through the years, acknowledge the situation. But work to change what’s in your control and celebrate your victories when they happen.

Recently, Training Industry announced its 2020 Top Sales Training Companies List and they included Tyson Group in their Watch List.

Now, Training Industry has some rigorous criteria they used in selecting the companies for these lists:

1. Thought leadership and influence on the sales training sector
2. Breadth and quality of sales training topics and competencies
3. Company size and growth potential
4. Industry recognition and innovation
5. Strength of clients and geographic reach

But what I find interesting about the Watch List is how Danielle Draewell, a market research analyst at Training Industry, Inc., described it: “The companies selected for the 2020 Sales Training Companies Watch List bring unique and specialized strengths to the sales training industry. These organizations create exclusive learning experiences and sustainment practices that keep the learner involved and connected in the industry.”  Read the full press release here.

Building a Larger Sales Community

Such milestones aren’t the result of any single individual. They are the fruits of the entire team’s collected efforts.  And the entire team deserves recognition. To be included on Training Industry’s list of influential players is an affirmation that the entire team is making an impact on the sales community.

We’ve always sought to capitalize on the skills, creativity, and energy of our team members to create a unique learning experience for our clients. Be it training, coaching sessions, or consulting on our assessments, each one of our clients are unique with unique circumstances. As such, we need to take a tailored approach to best serve each one.

But we also seek to provide our entire community of sales professionals with rich and unique learning experiences.  To that end, we recently launched Against the Sales Odds, a series of interviews with sales leaders. In this series, we have tapped some of the biggest names in the industry and given them a platform where they can share knowledge, wisdom, and advice with the sales community at large. It’s one of the ways the Tyson Group team is changing what’s in our control to improve the current situation.

You can Listen to the interview series, Against the Sales Odds, here.

As I said at the top of this post, to get through the tough times, including the one we are currently in, change what’s in your control and celebrate your victories when they happen.

Good Selling!

In the original version of the Magnificent Seven, Yul Brenner and Steve McQeen spend the opening scenes recruiting men to, “shoo some flies away from a little village.” In one scene, they come across Robert Vaughn who is on the run and now looking for work. When Vaughn agrees to join the team, Brenner holds up seven fingers indicating that they now have seven men on the team. McQueen, however, waves his hand as if to say, “hold on.” He has reservations about Vaughn. That’s when Brenner says, “No. No. He’s a good gun. And where we’re going is no church social.”

Our current business environment is also no church social. As sales leaders, we’ve seen some tumultuous times, such as 9/11, the Great Recession of 2008, and now the COVID-19 crisis. Let me ask you, do you have the right people in the right roles to address these challenging times?  Do you have a way to identify and recruit those “good guns” on your team to pull your group through the rough patches?

In this time of business uncertainty, your system for hiring, assembling, and developing your sales team should include the six strategies outlined below.

Register for the webinar, Sales Leadership During Times of Uncertainty here.

Factors That Predict Success

To ensure you have the right team in place, you’re going to have to look at some of the identifying factors that can statistically predict sales success. The new business reality is you aren’t going to have all the available resources to get the job done. Many of your resources might be trimmed down. Some of those resources may not even be available. So, like Billy Beane in Moneyball, if we are going into a championship match, you need a way to know your people are bringing the right skills and capabilities to the game for each role.

The Sales Team’s Capacity

We’ve talked about the shifting business landscape in the past. Sales leadership needs to gain a viewpoint of the capacity of salespeople in relation to what the business landscape now calls for. Many sales leaders know the attitude of their people. They like the people they hired. But their knowledge of their people’s capacity becomes spotty when it comes to what their people can really do. You need ways to understand how our people can perform under not-so-ideal conditions.

Select, Develop, and Retain Sales Talent

As a sales leader dealing with this business uncertainty and the demands from your organization, you’ll need to retain and develop your sales talent. You need to know where their strengths are and coach them through their opportunities for improvement. You’ll also need to address your overall training strategy for your people. I’ve seen many sales leaders simply pump content on their team thinking that exposure will result in a behavioral change. Instead, sales leadership needs to involve providing the right content to address the situation at hand.

The Right People Attached to the Right Job

You’ll also need systems for putting the right people in the right jobs. We covered this topic in a previous post on motivation. It goes back to a principle covered by Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great. You must get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And when dealing with business uncertainty, you need a system for accurately determining the right people for your organization and getting them into the right roles. Otherwise you’ll have an unmotivated and underperforming work team.

Future Facing

As stated before, business environments change. Sometimes the change is a fast hit and the business environment returns slowly. Other times, the change can be permanent. You and your team need to be flexible, innovative and nimble enough to address these events. So, your talent system needs to include ways to identify and develop your sales talent to accommodate future needs as well as a progression path for the people on your sales team.

Alignment of Strategies

Lastly, sales leadership needs to consider the whole system. Your sales team, your sales goals, and your go-to-market strategy all must play together. So, you need to take measures to align your strategy for onboarding and developing your sales talent with your goals and your marketing strategy.

In reviewing these strategies, there are a few key questions you must ask yourself when considering your talent strategy. First, do you have the right sales structure and the roles to execute the strategy you need to move forward? For example, in the businesses we deal with, most of our clients deal with what I call the disease of uniqueness. They have unique circumstances in the marketplace, unique demands of their customers, which means they will need to apply certain strategies when moving forward.

Secondly, what’s going to predict success in each of your sales roles? Do you know what those factors are and how to identify them? Or are you hiring someone just on raw attitude as mentioned above?

Lastly, do you have the right people in the right roles?

Detailed Review of These Sales Leadership Strategies

Our next webinar will cover these topics in more depth, look at answering these questions, and address ways to align your sales talent with your overall sales strategy. The webinar will help you:

1. Recognize the 6 strategies listed above to find and retain the right sales talent
2. Answer those 3 important questions to define your sales talent strategy
3. Analyze your product life cycle
4. Align your sales approach with what your market buys
5. Determine if your sales roles align with your sales approach

In these critical times, you’re going to need the most versatile sales force you can assemble because we all are going to be running a little leaner and meaner.

You can access the webinar on demand here.