5 Sales questions to ask you team weekly
- What is your success story of the week? (Starts positive and builds trust of the conversation)
- What is your biggest challenge?
- How can YOU change it? (They have the answer. They just need someone to help them draw it out of them. Important NOT to solve the problem for them, but to ask them how they intend to solve it)
- How many new conversations did you have this week?
- Who?
- How many new conversations will you have next week?
- Who?
- Anything else before we close the call?
FIRST! Notice none of these
questions are about money, dollars, or revenue! These are all activity and
solution based questions. Activity is where the money, the dollars, the revenue
all come from. Money will never come from talking about money. Those people are
what are referred to as dreamers.
SECOND! Set a time to talk to
your sales person about the “new weekly call”. Tell them the questions that
will be on the test, so to speak. Share the specific questions with them. 3 out
of 5 will prepare, the others will catch on. Ask them what time and day each
week works best for them, but give them only the options you want them to have;
i.e. “I have 5 sales people, so I have 5 time slots available on Monday &
Tuesday each week. Which day, and of these 5 times, which do you want?” Giving
them the choice is the first step in creating an accountability to the call. They
chose the “best time for them” for you to refer to when the question of
cancelling and rescheduling come up. Of course, down the road you can lighten
up. The beginning does have to be strict, it is the training window for both of
you.
These 5 questions free up
managers to manage. These 5 questions once a week put out future fires and stop
the chaos of putting out fires daily. Once this routine is customary to both
parties, the chaos stops, the work hours start to come down for both the sales
person and the sales manager.
In the first few weeks of the
change, let their calls go to voicemail. Make notes from the voicemail for the
weekly call, if not truly an emergency. Text, same thing. Simply reply, “remember
to bring that to the next call”. Don’t let texts create a sense of urgency or
stress to reply if not truly an emergency. Success stories, reply when you can
with encouragement and excitement. In all things, we want to reward the good
behaviors, so we are not going to a cold, ice running through our veins type of
system. It is easy to go too far, too literal, and too fast. We still care
about people. Remember, no one needs to be heard more than a sales person in
good times or bad.
The sales person will catch on
quickly. First, they will want to bounce all around, skipping the
uncomfortable, try to cancel, reschedule, etc. The time set is set for each
week, every week and must remain the same for the first 4 weeks. Rescheduling
request should be pushed. Ask if “does an earlier time work better for you? Say
6:45am?” No one ever wants to talk to the SM first thing in the morning, so
they accept the scheduling they agreed to quick, almost as if asking
for mercy.
The crucial task is to simply ask
them the question, stop talking, listen, and acknowledge in the end with, “anything
else", encouragement, and compliments. Rarely make suggestions, if ever. Far
better than a suggestion or advice is, “Will that address it?” “How can you
duplicate or avoid that again?” It is important they talk most of the weekly
call. After all, this is their time. They get once a week with you, they should
talk the most.
Share company updates through
emails tagged with, “call me with any questions or concerns.” If something is
not clear, they will call or reply. The weekly calls build trust and
accountability.
Every manager has that one person
on their team who will continue to have a daily crisis. Continue the practice of
listening most, making zero to no suggestions to solve their problems, and
quickly move down the path of, “Sounds terrible. What do you think will prevent
this from happening in the future?” Managers who solve problems for their sales
people are not managers, but Sales People Assistants. Quite a difference
between the two. No one wants “Sales Person Assistant” on their business card.
The next step is a group call, in
addition to and prior to your individual calls. This is where you will disperse
company information, changes, the newest lines, competitor insights, etc. Add
this call once you feel EVERYONE on your team is prepared weekly for their
individual calls. A good sign is each of your individual calls are under 15 minutes.
If you jump too soon, you will have your untrained, needy sales person taking
over your group calls with their problems. When someone does dive off course,
tell them on the group call, “we will discuss that in your individual call”
All of this is from my personal
experience and best practices with my own teams. Notice I said best practices. This is the system I came to trust, believe in, and generate the most success from as well as get the most out of my teams. This is the system those teams bought into.
