ebook ultimate guide to sales success

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

SALES SUCCESS

www.ConnectWise.com | 800.671.6898

You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, and expect to win.

- Zig Ziglar

A Technology Companys Ultimate Guide to Sales Success. How to Hire, Compensate, and Guide a Sales Rep. A great manager knows that the sales team can make or break a company. Without a strong sales staff and sales process in place, the revenue that pays your employee wages and runs the machine can disappear.

With 30+ years of experience in the technology services space, we have helped thousands of technology solution providers develop robust sales processes and partner up with the best training facilities in the country, like CharTec Academy, to bring you advice that works.

Business success is measured in profit and growth, which is primarily fueled by sales. Learn insider tips for hiring the right people, compensating them fairly, and creating smart and effective sales processes.

Part 1: Sales Hiring

Part 2: Sales Compensation

Part 3: Sales Process
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Part 1: Sales Hiring

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There is something that is much more scarce, something finer, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

--Elbert Hubbard

Not all salespeople are created equal. As a manager or owner, you know your sales performance is highly dependent on the quality of your team. Do they have experience? Do they fit the company culture? Are they trustworthy? Can they be trained?

And when you consider that a bad hiring choice could cost you upwards of $800,000, the task of hiring the right people becomes much more harrowing.*

*Smith, Fiona, The incredible cost of hiring a dud, Business Review Weekly, July 31, 2012.

Do you have a strategy in place to vet candidates? If not, then look no further.

In the next few sections, well share best practices from the CEO who has hired, fired, and compensated more salespeople than anyone you know: Alex Rogers. Hes documented 20+ years of successes and failures as the CEO of a technology company and offers this invaluable advice to business owners and managers via his technology sales training company, CharTec Academy.

7 Must-Haves Before You HireBefore even penning a job description, you need to have tools in place that will help a sales rep thrive. You hire sales reps to do one thing: sell. They should not be creating your sales collateral, proposal, product offering, etc. Its your job to have these in place before you can offer them a job. It all starts with you.

Here are 7 things to consider before hiring a sales rep.

1. Training Program What do sales reps need to know? How can they learn it? And how quickly should they know it? Think of this as your onboarding program. What should they know at 1 month in, 3 months, or 6 months in? Document resources and locations. Explain how they should be used and in what order theyre best digested. Test your employees along the way. Review progress in weekly 1:1s, and make sure youre keeping training materials evergreen by asking new employees for input.

2. Product & Service Offering Sales reps need a defined offering to sell in order to be successful. At the very least, have a spec sheet and talking points in place before adding a sales rep. Make sure youre able to clearly explain what unique value your products/services bring to the market. Your reps should be able to sell the value of your product rather than just the product itself. Give them the knowledge to do this.

3. Sales Process Define your desired sales processevery single step from a discovery call to a closed deal should be mapped out. This process can be automated with a CRM platform. How long should the rep wait to follow up with a prospect after leaving a voicemail? Is there an approved quote template they should use? Does a manager need to review the quote before its sent to the customer? All these questions should be answered.

The Ultimate Guide to Sales Success: Part 1 - Sales Hiring

4. Presentation Have a call script and a PowerPoint deck available, and invest in tools that will help your sales team deliver a compelling presentation. This will help your new sales rep better understand your offering and give them a great foundation with which to win over prospects.

5. Proposal Map out and create templates for each proposal type you think your sales rep will need. They should appear professional, aesthetically pleasing, and include your brandinglogo, tagline, design elements, messaging style. You can easily knock out this to-do with a quote and proposal automation solution. If you dont develop templates, you not only leave your brand image to their discretion, but also create one more task that takes them away from what they do best: sell.

6. Agreements Most sales reps will say just about anything to close a deal. Thats why you should never leave the agreements up to them. They want to sell as much and as fast as they can; theyre not incentivized to worry about what happens after the sale.

7. Money in the Bank You absolutely must have 4 6 months of salary in the bank before you hire a sales rep. Even superstars will need time to ramp up before they start bringing in big bucks. Plan for that.

Once you have these key items, youre ready to define, post, and start interviewing for your sales job. But as Im sure youre aware, youre not out of the woods yet.

Often, selecting the right candidate for your business is the hardest part. And like we mentioned above, a bad hire could end up costing you dearly, so you want to hire the right person the first time.

So, now that you know what you need to have ready before you hire, lets turn our attention to the hiring process itself.


6 Steps to Hiring Your Sales Superstar

1. Define the Role Its really hard to find what youre looking for when you dont have any parameters. Take the time to go beyond the job description and really think about the day-to-day activities this person will need to perform. Consider what personality type would be best suited for this type of role. What skills and experience will this person need in order to be successful? Once you have a handle on what youre looking for, you can start to sift through the resumes.

2. Review Job History Look for a sales focus and longevity at companies. You dont want someone who switches companies every 6 months. Thats a wasted investment. And on the flipside, dont overlook employment gaps either. Furthermore, candidates whove had experience selling intangible solutions are typically worth at least interviewing because they know how to sell the invisible. In this profession, were selling the invisible: the value of our services.

3. Make the First Call Unscheduled By calling the candidate out of the blue, youll be able to see how easily theyre able to adapt, and they wont be as nervous because they will not have had time to anticipate the call. Use this conversation to break the ice with small talk, and test general knowledge of your company and the industry. This is a favorite technique of ConnectWises Worldwide Senior Vice President of Sales Adam Slutskin. If everything checks out, request the candidates W2, and send over the DISC assessment.

4. Set up a Face-to-Face & Follow-up Interviews Assuming you walked away from the initial phone interview with a positive impression, proceed to the face-to-face interview. Because theyll have time to prep for this interview, its okay to break out the tough questionswhy you, salary requirements, and strengths and weaknesses. Download our interview guide worksheet. If everything goes well, bring the candidate back in for your management team to vet. Keep an eye out for red flags, make sure this is someone your team wants to work with, ask for honest second opinions, and ensure the candidate is consistent.

Trust, but Verify. Always ask for a way to verify extraordinary claims like consistently achieving 100% quota, inflated job titles, high level degrees, and obscure certificates.

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DISC Profile of a Sales GuyDISC stands for dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. Its a personality test designed to help you identify innate tendencies. Most great sales people score highest in the dominance and influence categories.


5. Tour the Facility This is your chance to impress them. Highlight all the little perks your facility has to offer, then share a sample commission sheet and paint the picture of how much a successful sales rep can take home. Show them all the tools youve invested in to help him or her quickly ramp up and become successful. This should include all the specialized systems youve put in place to help standardize and manage workloads. This is the type of information that builds confidence in your company, and makes candidates want to work for you.

Hiring the right sales reps doesnt have to be scary. Avoid costly mistakes by ensuring you have the right resources in place to support a sales rep, and know how to effectively recruit superstar sales champions.

Once youve hired your team of quota crushers, youll want to give them ample time to ramp up, and then make sure youre compensating them fairly. In part 2, well share sales compensation best practices.

6. Conduct the Final Interview Over Lunch Now, youre being interviewed, and you have to impress. If youre trying to recruit a sales superstar away from a cushy job, you need to be sensitive to the fact that theyve already built a lifestyle for themselves. You need to give them good reason to want to switch. Theyre not going to want to make a minimal base salary while they ramp up and learn your business. Beyond this, be sure to reiterate any other company perks, industry stats, growth potential, or company culture factors that could support their decision to choose to work for you.

8 Hiring Red Flags You Need to Know

1. Incompatible Personality2. Unlikeable First Impression3. Dishonesty

For the remaining red flags,view the Hiring a Sales Rep:8 Red Flags infographic.
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Part 2: Sales Compensation

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Whats the best way to incentivize sales reps? How much is too much, and how much is too little?

Youre not the only one with these burning questions on your mind. You dont want to overpay and undermine your profitability, but you also dont want to underpay and risk losing your best sales reps to a higher-paying competitor.

This guide will share time-tested techniquesprovided by CharTech sales training expert Alex Rogersfor finding the right incentive ranges for your sales teams.

CostsContrary to popular beliefs, you should pay out on a percentage of profits, not gross sales. This protects you against having to pay commissions on unprofitable deals. Plus, it also keeps your sales reps from going after a nightmare client just to make a commission goal.

Know what a profitable customer looks like, what sort of agreements will result in profit and what dont. It can be hard to figure all these metrics out on your own. Fortunately, you dont have to. There are plenty of business management platforms available to provide the visibility you need to determine what makes a deal profitable.

Whatever you want more of is what you compensate on. You want more profit? Compensate on profit. You want more agreements? Incentivize agreements. Want more customers? Pay on number of acquired customers.

What you compensate on may change every year, but base it on your business plan and business goals. Determine whats more important to your organization. If youre transitioning to an a-as-service model, its a great way to get your sales people to sell service contracts and the like.

Before you can begin to pay out incentives, you first need to have a thorough understanding of your total cost of goods and services. Consider the following when trying to determine your total costs.

The Ultimate Guide to Sales Success: Part 2 - Sales Compensation

Identify Your Cost of Goods:

Hardware/software

Labor burden

Expense account (lunch, golfing, presents, entertainment)

Outsourced services

All these areas eat into your profitability and should be excluded when considering commissions. For instance, if your sales rep spends $1,500 on golf and drinks with a client to capture a $10,000 deal with a 25% profit margin, you should only pay a commission on $1,000 of that $2,500 profit.

Paying a base salary is incredibly important. Its going to take time for your new rep to learn how to effectively sell your products, and most people need a steady paycheck in order to make ends meet.

We believe in having a 60-day ramp up period. During this time, there shouldnt be any selling, just prepping to sell. Knowing that, what are you going to do to help them become successful?

Once you have a handle on the onboarding, its time to think commission.

Certainly, some reps can evolve into a commission-only plan, but they require a mixed approach up front. No one shows up on day one able to close tons of business for a product theyve never sold before. Give new sales reps time to build relationships, learn the products inside and out, and become a part of your companys culture.

The prospect of forgoing commission for 60+ days can keep a sales superstar from opting to work for you. In special cases like these, we recommend the commission ramp-down option.

With this model, they dont have to sacrifice commission up front while they learn how to sell your products and services. The idea is that their skill level and sales will rise to meet the reduction in guaranteed commission each month until theyre achieving 100% on their own.


Incentive Considerations

To keep business running smoothly, its important to define each role clearly and to give them shared goals. Look at the various activities that tie your team together, and use these common areas to create intertwining goals.

Below are some of the typical roles youll find in a sales organizationsand recommendations around how to compensate them.

Sales Admin

This role is the heartbeat of the sales team. It takes all the administrative burdens off your farmers and closers, so they can identify and capture more business. This is typically a salary-only role, but everything this role does can be tied to deals won. As such, we recommend adding a small incentive attached to won opportunities. This ensures everyone is motivated and focused on achieving the same goal.

Farmers

Finding and nurturing leads, farmers qualify, follow up with, and help nurture prospects into customers. Their performance should be measured against call volume and sales-qualified leads. The key is volume. Track the volume they produce without micromanaging them. A business management tool can help you do this. This role should receive a mid-level salary. More than admin, but less than closer.

Closers

Once leads near readiness to buy, theyre transferred from the farmer to the closer, to seal the deal. This role is highly persuasive and responsible for winning business. It should receive a medium/high salary.


How a Commission Ramp-Down Plan WorksIf you really want an established sales superstar, and their desired salary range is something you can afford, consider a guaranteed ramp-down commission plan to sweeten the deal. If he or she wants to make $150,000 per year, do a guaranteed, six-month commission ramp-down where the candidate gets:

100% of their commission in the first month83% in the second month66% in the third month

49% in their fourth month32% in their fifth month15% in the sixth and final ramp-down month

Roles and Responsibilities

Quotas are your primary measure of sales success. Without these, your sales team can easily lose focus of company goals. To make sure your team is on track, you need a smart business tool that empowers you to track sales goal progress, activities, as well as call volume via real-time dashboards. All these key pieces of data can be early indicators of failure or success. And you can use them to coach and manage your team.

Consider Having Quotas for (and Measuring):

1. Hardware profits You need to make sure these traditionally low-margin products arent being given away for free.

2. Labor profits Product installation and maintenance comes at a cost. By creating quotas around this, youll ensure your sales reps arent recklessly discounting labor.

3. Contract amounts/agreements Net new business is a must if you want to keep growing. As such, reps need to be goaled on capturing a certain amount of new business each month.

4. Retention/Annuities Anyone can sell something once, but keeping customers happy and coming back for more is another story. Reward reps with annuities for clients who renew service contracts with your company.

5. Proactive sales activities This is the one quota that should be met every quarter. It includes follow-up calls, appointments, client or prospect visits, thank you letters, quotes, emails, or any other activities that have been demonstrated to move the needle in your sales organization. By putting these incentivizing best practices into place in your sales organization, youll position yourself to fairly compensate and motivate your team to succeed. In part 3, well talk about how to generate and hold accountability to sales practices that not only help your sales reps be more successful overall, but also give you dashboard visibility to sales tracking.


Sales Managers

This role is fully dedicated to removing sales barriers. Theyre compensated on the overall success of their sales team, and they typically receive high salaries.

Account Managers

This role sells into and acts as the primary point of contact for existing customers. Their salaries will vary based on experience, but usually fall somewhere between farmer and closer. They should be incentivized on customer retention rates, upselling, add-ons, and upgrades.

Quotas

5 Commission Recommendations:

1. Pay commission every single month2. Pay commission on the past month (e.g. September sales get paid in October)3. Print out all supporting doccumentation4. Job cost the projects5. Beware of changing it up

Part 3: Sales Process

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Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.--A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

In part 1 of this Ultimate Guide to Sales Success, we explained what you need to have in place before hiring a sales team, then (in part 2) we explained how to effectively compensate sales reps.

Once you have the greatest incentive plan, processes, and sales training in place, its so important to measure your efforts. You might have the best of everything, but without a way to gauge how well its working or what needs to be adjusted, youre driving blind.

Worry not! Were about to share actionable ways to make the most out of your efforts by putting the right tools and processes in place. By doing so, you will gain a strategic view into your sales operations and performance, and be able to take your business to the next level.

Better Forecast Where Sales Will LandIf you dont know where sales are tracking today, this week, or this quarter, you cant effectively manage to the set goals. Youre literally driving blind, and thats not good for anyone.

This lack of visibility also means you might not be able to see which sales reps are in good shape to hit their quotas, and which are struggling. Its really challenging to lead a team when you have to trust them to bring issues forward.

Its hard to admit youre not performing well. No want wants to have to do that.

By putting automated tools in place to deliver real-time tracking by individual and team, you can start to proactively help your team stay on track to achieve sales goals.

These tools might include a business management platform, like ConnectWise, paired with a quote and proposal automation solution, like Quosal, to track, guide, and streamline the sales process from inception to completion.

Create & Automate Sales Processes

In order to make your sales team as effective as possible, youll want to create a guided approach to selling. This process should include steps that help reps avoid common selling pitfallslike not following up on time, forgetting to send a quote, failing to include terms and conditions, and underquoting your services.

A sales managers least favorite question is where are we with this deal? They dont like having to ask their sales people for updates. And the sales reps dont like being questioned either. Thats why companies buy a customer relationship management tool (CRM); it creates accountability. With a system that notes every activity as its performed, no one has to ask for updates anymore. They can just check the system. It eliminates the guesswork, saves time, and makes everyone happier.

Part of the selling process should include identifying how customers typically buy from you. Dont be surprised if a managed services deal is consumed differently than a onetime installation or integration. It all depends on what youre selling. Every solution has a unique buying cycle.

Certainly, there are exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, youre not going to run into a prospect who is ready to buy immediately.

The Ultimate Guide to Sales Success: Part 3 - Sales Process

Look at past sales successes. What actions preceded sales? Many successful sales processes include a mix of the following activities:

1. Discovery call

2. On-site meeting

3. Demonstration

4. Quote delivery

5. Follow-up

6. Close

Once youve identified your steps in the process, you can make your team accountable for placing the opportunity in the right step, and systematically moving it along the sales cycle. And youll give managers 360-degree insight into every step along the way.

Eliminate Guesswork

With an automated process in place that pings your team when its time to perform the next step in the sales process, youll never have to worry about your team missing vital steps in the process.

Were human. We have a lot on our plates, get distracted, and forget important to-dos. And sales reps arent fans of documentation tasks. Theyre a pain. By providing

your team with easy processes (and tools to make them even easier), youll find it much easier to get them to document steps. Its important to earn buy-in from your team. Explain the benefits and alternatives. Together, you can create processes everyone can agree on.

Take the guesswork out of opportunities. Smart workflows keep your team members moving forward until opportunities are either won or lost.

Measure Each Stage of the Sales Cycle

What would you do if you found a certain step in your sales process was outdated and ineffective? Youd probably update or remove it. But if youre not measuring or dont have the tools in place to measure, youll never get to see whats working, and youll never know which adjustments to make.

The end goal of your sales process should be to shorten the sales cycle, close deals faster, increase profitability, and move opportunities forward more quickly.

One way you can shorten stages of your sales cycle is by using a CRM, like the one inside the ConnectWise business management platform, to log key activities. This way, you can identify sales barriers, and start to brainstorm solutions.


How to Manage Your New Sales ProcessA CRM will give you a 360 view into all of your companys sales opportunities, activities, and goals. This gives you the benefit of being able to quickly identify and respond to areas that require improvement.

Once youve got your hands on the data, act on it. Hold weekly sales meetings or daily huddles to review key stats. Use your CRM data to create real-time sales team performance dashboardsand forecasting dashboards based on historical trends. Deal with issues right away, instead of letting them take you by surprise weeks later.

Build sales funnel reports that follow the opportunities moving along in your pipeline. For instance, show what percentage moves from the first stage to the second stage. This equips you to make more accurate sales forecasts.

How a Business Management Platform Benefits You

Sales doesnt end with the dotted line. What if you could tie in your CRM and sales process with everything else in your business? A business management platform can help you achieve this by offering CRM, ticketing, projects, procurement, and invoicing functionality that works together.

You gain visibility into every aspect of your sales process. Overdue activities and tickets appear in red, so you can easily get back up to speed simply by getting the red out. Thats what your weekly sales meeting should seek to accomplish.

This type of a platform even gives managers the ability to see what reps are working on (or ignoring), which makes it easy to see who is a high-impact employee and who may require more training or isnt the right fit.

Managers can even assign leads to sales reps within a business management platform, giving reps the ability to see which leads theyre expected to work. And, managers can easily access and respond to prospect concerns when their reps are out of office.

Serving as a centralized database for all customer information, a business management platform makes it easy for new reps to ramp up because it gives them access to any clients entire history.

ConnectWise does all this, plus offers top educational materials every step of the way as you implement your very own sales processes. You can use ConnectWise for every team within your technology companyService Delivery, Project Management, Sales & Marketing, and Finance. Its one integrated tool for every facet of your business.

Conclusion

A great sales process lays the foundation for scalability. Documented processes simplify the training and onboarding process. So, as you add new sales team members, youll more quickly realize the benefit of their talents as theyll be following best practices unique to the way you do business.

Supercharge sales by adding automation tools like a business management platform or quote and proposal automation solution to drive efficiencies within your processes. By automating keys steps of your sales process, youll cut down on errors, and so much more.


ebook ultimate guide to sales success

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