Three Steps to Increasing Sales Results, Part I

Do you want to increase your sales proficiency of your people by 100 percent? Professional Selling Power magazine reports this formula:

Number 1) Having a selling system that works can increase sales effectiveness and net results by as much as 30 percent.

Number 2) Following a selling program or procedure can increase selling effectiveness and net results by as much as 20 percent.

And number 3) Maintaining a positive mindset or attitude can influence your selling effectiveness and net results by as much as 50 percent!!!

So let’s start with the biggest bang for the buck —attitude.

As the leader, one of your most important jobs is to create the culture that gets people excited about growth and their being of greater service to more clients. That comes in two forms: What you do and what you allow. What you allow can negate what you do.

What you “do” creates a sales attitude.

There are, of course, many things you can do to improve the attitude regarding sales in your organization, including celebrations of results, intrinsic rewards, daily and weekly focus events, quarterly all-employee meetings with a speaker, weekly training and sales meetings, daily positive focus meetings, and focus on the fact that selling is just helping people get what they need. You can create a culture where employees reinforce others for results.

While all these things are important, most banks find these efforts are negated to some degree because they aren’t dealing with the “energy sucker” behaviors—or as some like to call them, the true energy vampire behaviors.

They rob the creativity, energy and enthusiasm from your team— and you can add water to the bucket all day long…but until you stop the leak on the bottom, the bucket never fills.

What you “allow” destroys the sales attitude.

“Energy suckers” come in many shapes and sizes. There are the “whiners” who focus on all things negative. They can find something wrong with just about anything—it’s almost a gift!

Then, there are the “saboteurs” who have a primary objective of stirring the pot—they seem motivated by being right about how hard their job is.

Then there are “excuse factories,” those who miss deadlines and results consistently—instead of saying they blew it and what they’ll do to fix it, they instead simply share the reason why it couldn’t be done.

But nobody asked for that. You’ve heard the expression—don’t tell me about the labor pains—show me the baby. Well…

You start to divert work away from “excuse factories” because there is no platform of trust. Let’s face it—you can’t keep your commitments if people around you don’t keep theirs. No matter how much they are paid, it’s too much if they can’t be trusted to deliver.

No matter what the shape, size or label of your “energy suckers,” they must be dealt with or the efforts you make at growing your organization’s sales will be thwarted.

Handle “energy suckers” with this three-step approach:

1) Make the guilty party very aware that they have a problem behavior that is impacting results, and you need them to commit to changing. This is not a good time for them to have the floor to explain “why”. They have excuses or dysfunctional behavior—you don’t want to hear about those, you don’t care about the why. Giving time to that only negates the importance of the conversation—and that can’t be allowed. Before the end of the conversation, ask them to make a verbal and/or written commitment for immediate change.

Number 2) If you later see recurrences of the behavior with the employee, let them know you are aware they broke a commitment to change, and now you have an additional problem; diminished trust. Make them aware how serious this is because the entire foundation of your relationship is built on trust, and without it, there are no grounds for a relationship. Ask for their commitment not to breach that trust ever again. Have them sign a commitment form. And thank them for their commitment and let them know you fully expect that you won’t need to have this conversation ever again.

And number 3) If the conversation needs to happen more than twice, the next conversation needs to be about freeing up their future. You cannot allow their toxicity of excuses, whining and sabotaging to destroy the energy of the group. The energy sucker’s last day is usually a great day for the rest of the team, as they are no longer drained by those who aren’t playing the game to win. If they don’t share your value system, you have no choice but to part company-no matter how good their performance is because their attitude WILL decrease the performance of those around them. Protect the culture of your organization to create an attitude of accountability, performance, and celebration.

For a quick, 60-minute complimentary coaching session where we’ll help you identify three things you can do right away that will make it will make it easier for you to create a better attitude for sales performance culture, click here or call our office at 952-737-6730. The reason we make that offer is that is we know a percentage of the people who take advantage of that then attend one of our events or become one of our culture performance clients.

Again, click here or call our office at 952-737-6730.