Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Fixing Your Sales Team: It Starts with People

Transcript

Fixing Your Sales Team: It Starts with People · Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the show. Today we're going to be looking
• 0:04
  at the common causes of sales team performance decline.
• 0:09
  That is just a very academic way of saying that we're going to
• 0:13
  look at the reasons why sales team performance goes down.
• 0:17
  And we have been leading up to these to these reasons, these
• 0:21
  issues from yesterday's episode and I think the episode the day
• 0:25
  before where I told you guys that we're going to look at
• 0:28
  people related issues, excuse me, process related issues,
• 0:32
  market related issues and organizational issues that
• 0:36
  causes your sales team performance to go down.
• 0:39
  Now my aim of doing this is that by identifying what the root
• 0:43
  causes are when your sales performance, the performance of
• 0:49
  your sales team declines, we can all come up with targeted
• 0:52
  solutions to improve the results.
• 0:54
  So today we're going to be looking at people related issues
• 0:58
  for why your sales are going down.
• 1:00
  And we're going to be looking at things like lack of motivation
• 1:03
  because that's one of the reasons why your sales people
• 1:05
  are not performing well or not selling well.
• 1:07
  Poor leadership because sometimes you are the cause for
• 1:11
  why your sales team is not selling well.
• 1:13
  There's also sales talent shortage.
• 1:16
  You don't have right people on the team.
• 1:18
  Then there's also a high turnover.
• 1:20
  So that means your sales team is suffering because people keep
• 1:24
  leaving. Whether it's high performing
• 1:25
  people, high performing people are leaving, or whether it's low
• 1:28
  performing people are leaving. But either way, if you have,
• 1:31
  let's say, 5 sales people at any given length of time, and then
• 1:35
  in January, 2 people leave, you replace them in February, so
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  they're five again, well, then in February, one more person
• 1:41
  leaves, you replace the person in March, and then they're five
• 1:44
  again. But you can see how not having a
• 1:47
  stable core crew of sales people is going to affect how it is
• 1:50
  that you're going to be able to sell, how you're going to be
• 1:53
  able to move merchandise in your business.
• 1:55
  So we're going to examine a few of these reasons today.
• 1:59
  Now, lack of motivation and lack of morale and all these sorts of
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  things can be a factor, can be a number of you can be caused by
• 2:08
  different things. Sometimes it's because the goals
• 2:11
  that you have for selling are not clear.
• 2:13
  Sometimes it's because the incentives are not good enough,
• 2:17
  whether it's the money or the terms of the terms of
• 2:20
  employment. Sometimes it's because people
• 2:22
  are going through burnout. Sometimes it can be because of a
• 2:25
  negative work environment, and sometimes it can be because of
• 2:28
  poor team dynamics. So you might have somebody who
• 2:31
  is a high seller who is not a team player, and the person
• 2:34
  doesn't bother to teach people or encourage people in how to
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  sell well. And it can cause all kinds of
• 2:41
  all kinds of dynamics. And then for the poor
• 2:44
  leadership, it could be because you as the business owner or you
• 2:50
  as the sales manager, you have a weak management style or you
• 2:53
  don't provide them adequate support, you don't provide them
• 2:56
  adequate coaching. And sales talent shortages are
• 3:00
  just it's essentially difficulties in hiring and
• 3:03
  keeping talk people around. So let's run through a couple of
• 3:06
  these and see what to do about these subsets of problems.
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  Because remember the main problem that we're trying to
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  solve is you might be in an organization or you might own a
• 3:16
  business where your sales performance is going down.
• 3:18
  And we have looked at some of these people related issues that
• 3:22
  are causing the sales performance to go down.
• 3:25
  So what can we do about these sorts of things?
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  Now on the clear ghost thing, one way of sorting out this
• 3:31
  problem is we just need to make sure that all I put it, it's not
• 3:36
  enough to just say good morning boys and girls, happy new month.
• 3:40
  This is January 1st. So go ye forth and sell.
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  That's that's not that is not sufficient direction or guidance
• 3:51
  on how people are supposed to go about selling.
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  It'll be best if you have activity based conversations
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  when it comes to goals or revenue based conversations when
• 3:59
  it comes to goals. I'm not going to go into the
• 4:01
  debate of which is better, but just know that these are
• 4:04
  alternatives, these that are available to you.
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  So if you show up on January 1st and you're saying happy new
• 4:10
  month team this month, it would be nice if we can sell, bring in
• 4:14
  200 million in annual revenue. Now, whether that figure is
• 4:19
  realistic or not, you can see that at least this is a specific
• 4:24
  goal that you can start planning towards that you can track
• 4:27
  towards. So back when my little cousin
• 4:29
  was in banking, you know, these are some of the things that she
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  was faced with because, you know, they would sit down at the
• 4:35
  beginning of the year and then the branch manager will say
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  annual goal this month is so, so and so hundreds of million and
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  blah, blah, blah. But The thing is, if you now
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  tell people that our annual branch goal is, you know, 800
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  million, then people can now plan.
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  Like, OK, if the annual goal is 800 million, then I should be
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  bringing in this X amount of 1,000,000 per month.
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  So daily I should be looking at this, weekly I should be looking
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  at this. You can see that having a clear
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  goal gives people the ability to plan.
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  And for you, who is the business owner or the sales manager, you
• 5:05
  can also help people plan accordingly as well.
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  Now there are some people who like to do things on the
• 5:11
  activity based end of the spectrum and that is where I
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  fall. I'll make podcast episode about
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  that later where you're tracking the activities that people do.
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  So you're thinking, well, of course numbers are always behind
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  activity based planning at the end of the day.
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  So you might look at your previous activity, maybe last
• 5:36
  year you guys did maybe 10 M in revenue and you realize that
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  that 10 M was because you guys had 20 clients or something of
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  that nature. And then with that, you're going
• 5:45
  to be able to reason backwards and say that, OK, if we want to
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  do business with 20 people at the end of the year, we should
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  be speaking to X number of people per month, which is X
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  number of people per week and which is X number of people
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  daily. So in that case, you're not
• 5:58
  going to be able to track the activity of your sales team to
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  say that, look, if we're going to hit our end of year goals,
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  you guys should be talking to at least 5-5 customers every day.
• 6:08
  Out of that 55 customers you're talking to at the end of the
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  week, if we do a good job, each of you would have brought in
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  three, three customers. If each of you are bringing in
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  three, three customers, then this is how much we're going to
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  be doing per month. This is how much we're going to
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  be doing per quarter, this is how much we'll do per year.
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  So these are ways of going about it.
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  So there's the revenue target. This is the amount of money that
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  we should bring in at the end of the year.
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  And then you plan backwards or you say that if we're going to
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  hit our money goals, these are the number of people that we
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  should be talking to, the number of proposals that we should be
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  issuing or the number of house office or office visits that we
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  should be doing, the number of proposals that we should be
• 6:46
  sending out. You take some activities and
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  then you start tracking it to make sure that your people are
• 6:50
  hitting those metrics. Now there are some difficulty
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  when it comes to activity based goals because it's easy for
• 6:59
  people to just send emails for the sake of sending emails.
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  So if yes, say you give them a target of you should be emailing
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  10 proposals every day, then people can just start emailing
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  proposals to every Tom, Dick and Harry, whether they might be a
• 7:13
  good potential customer or not. So yes, there are those dangers,
• 7:17
  but we can get up. We can talk about those dangers
• 7:19
  and how to avoid them in future partners episodes.
• 7:22
  But for now, just know that as the business owner or as the
• 7:26
  sales manager, it's not just enough for you to show up on
• 7:28
  January 1st and say happy new month.
• 7:32
  You know, go ye forth and sell. Let us bring in progress.
• 7:35
  You have to have much more detailed and clearer
• 7:39
  conversations. You can have the conversations
• 7:41
  around activity. So team members, happy new
• 7:44
  month. This is these are the activities
• 7:46
  that I expect you guys to carry out for this week, for this
• 7:49
  month so that we can hit our quarterly goals, our annual
• 7:51
  goals, blah, blah, blah. Or you have a revenue goal and
• 7:54
  say happy new month, guys, remember for this year,
• 7:57
  2024-2025 or whenever you're listening to the podcast, our
• 8:01
  revenue goal is blah, blah, blah.
• 8:03
  So this month we're expected to bring in this and this and this
• 8:05
  and that. Then that's on clear goals.
• 8:10
  So for burnout and bad work environments, you know, people
• 8:15
  are being toxic. And then burnout.
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  Burnout is when people all I put in, they lose their motivation,
• 8:22
  they lose their bluster, and they lose connection with the
• 8:25
  job that they're doing. This is not something I can talk
• 8:28
  about on the podcast because bad, because bad work
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  environments and burnout, toxic work colleagues, things like
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  that. These are actually management
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  problems and this is beyond my skill set because I'm not a
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  management consultant. I just focus mostly on sales and
• 8:44
  the business development side of the journey.
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  So if you're figuring, if you're having these sorts of problems
• 8:49
  that you want, you need help figuring these these things out,
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  you shouldn't be talking to me. You should be talking to a
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  management consultant. So check your LinkedIn, your
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  Instagram, your whatever. You should find a couple of
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  people that you should be able to have those conversations with
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  and they'll help sort you out. Now, bad leadership, yes, that
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  is also a management problem, but it's an easy problem to
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  solve when you are the business owner, because the problem is
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  bad leadership. There's nobody else that you can
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  point to. You're the business owner or
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  you're the you're the sales manager.
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  So the problem is all about you. So this is an easy problem to
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  solve because if I'm talking to you, there's nobody else who has
• 9:29
  responsibility. So you're where the buck stops.
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  So we have to sit down, knock our heads together and figure
• 9:36
  out how it is that we're going to solve the problem.
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  So leadership problems, it's all about you, the business owner or
• 9:44
  the sales manager. And there are factors that we
• 9:48
  can tweak, that we can change easily to change the outcomes.
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  The reason why I can't address management problems is because
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  management problems are about structures and about incentives
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  and structures and incentives. These are not easy things to
• 10:01
  navigate unless you are a specialist.
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  So you know where it is that you're going to tweak.
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  So if bad leadership seems to be a problem, then within your
• 10:13
  organization, then we need to tackle these leadership issues
• 10:17
  head on because this is low hanging fruit.
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  So since the problem is with you as the leader, as the owner, as
• 10:23
  a sales manager, we can easily change one or two things to
• 10:27
  affect the overall sales performance.
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  So how do we cure bad leadership when you are the problem?
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  First of all, don't take it personal.
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  Nobody is perfect when these things come up.
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  Just think of it as self improvement, as a self
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  improvement challenge. Don't think of it as
• 10:46
  recriminations from your staff. Now, I know that this is not
• 10:51
  easy, and I'm also speaking about this from personal
• 10:54
  experience. It's not easy when you're in
• 10:56
  business with people and people are pointing their finger at you
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  saying that you are the bottleneck, you are the clog.
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  So when that happens, don't assume that this is a coup and
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  people are trying to blame you for everything or hoist you out
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  or things like that. Just look at it as a personal
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  development challenge and that no one is perfect.
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  Let us see if there's a kernel of truth in whatever it is that
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  the sales team or other members of staff are trying to say.
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  So for poor leadership, for weak management, for things like
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  that, one of the solutions actually is care delegations and
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  follow through on whenever we agree that we're going to do
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  something. Because sometimes the problem is
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  just that you're doing your best to be the best leader that you
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  can and you come up with inspirational and well thought
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  out activities that people are supposed to do.
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  But The thing is, what you're saying makes sense, but then you
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  don't delegate properly and you don't follow through, you don't
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  follow up on agreed action items.
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  And so that is why things don't get done.
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  So one thing that I've noticed dealing with Nigerian business
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  owners, for instance, is that a Nigerian business owner is
• 12:06
  usually in the habit of saying something like somebody should
• 12:09
  handle the XYZ account and you just leave it like that.
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  You say that during the meeting. Now, what you have said is
• 12:16
  actually correct. As the business owner, somebody
• 12:18
  should pay attention to this XYZ thing.
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  And if somebody does pay attention to the XYZ thing, yes,
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  the sales, the sales performance is going to improve for the
• 12:29
  business. However, standing up in the
• 12:33
  middle of a team meeting and saying what is wrong with you
• 12:36
  people? For God's sake, somebody should
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  handle this XYZ account. It is not the same thing as
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  saying when you when you're in the meeting.
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  It's not the same thing as standing up in the meeting,
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  looking directly at one person and then saying, Dorothy, I
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  think this should be part of your responsibility.
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  You should look into the minutes of this XYZ account, give me a
• 12:58
  list of outstanding action items, and then get back to me
• 13:01
  Wednesday morning on what you think we should do to move this
• 13:04
  thing forward. Now the 2nd way, this latter way
• 13:08
  is more specific and it prevents this situation where all of you
• 13:13
  come back Wednesday morning and then you're not having to shout
• 13:15
  at everybody again because nobody met the standards.
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  And the problem is you didn't clearly communicate the
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  standard. So for Nigerian business owners,
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  please, this is something we need to work on because it's
• 13:26
  something that I've seen, it's not just something I've seen in
• 13:30
  Nigerian business, it's something I've even seen in my
• 13:31
  family. You know, when we sit down,
• 13:33
  we're trying to solve family problems.
• 13:34
  You know, an uncle will stand up and shout and everything and
• 13:37
  that somebody should do this, somebody should do this,
• 13:39
  somebody should do this is not the same thing as saying you
• 13:43
  Kunle or you die or go and investigate. 123456 get back to
• 13:52
  me Friday morning on what it is that you think we need to do to
• 13:56
  solve this problem. It's a totally different thing.
• 14:00
  So to solve these leadership problems and the league
• 14:03
  management problems, we need clear delegation and we need
• 14:08
  clear follow up or clear follow through.
• 14:09
  I prefer to say follow through on agreed upon action items.
• 14:12
  So we should learn to be specific on these ones.
• 14:14
  So dear business owner, dear sales manager, yes, your idea is
• 14:18
  brilliant. The problem is lots of times
• 14:21
  you're standing up during the weekly, monthly meetings and
• 14:24
  you're shouting at everybody, but you haven't given anyone in
• 14:27
  particular responsibility for doing something.
• 14:30
  At the moment you start giving people responsibility, there's
• 14:32
  going to be accountability around certain things and you
• 14:35
  see that the improvement, sorry, your sales performance is going
• 14:38
  to improve. So let's see for the sales
• 14:41
  hiring and the training sorted shortage.
• 14:44
  There's no need in stressing that again because that's the
• 14:47
  purpose of this podcast and we go over that from time to time.
• 14:50
  So just listen out for future episodes if you're new to the
• 14:53
  show. And of course, if you've been
• 14:54
  listening for any length of time, you already know the
• 14:56
  episodes where I dealt with these sorts of things.
• 14:59
  Or you can just use Listen Notes, that is LISTEN and then
• 15:04
  notes NOTES, it's a website that catalogues different websites.
• 15:09
  All you have to do is look for my podcast there in Listen
• 15:12
  Notes. It allows you to search within
• 15:14
  the episodes for where I spoke about these sorts of things.
• 15:16
  So if you just pull up Listen Notes, you find my podcast and
• 15:20
  you hit the search function and then you search sales hiring.
• 15:24
  Every single episode that I have done around sales hiring for
• 15:28
  because we're currently at over 900 episodes now, it will go
• 15:31
  through all the 900 episodes and it will give you those episodes
• 15:34
  where I spoke about sales hiring anywhere I spoke about sales
• 15:38
  training, it will give you those episodes.
• 15:40
  So that's also another cool way to use this podcast.
• 15:44
  You can use it as a learning resource.
• 15:46
  The episodes are out there for free over on the Internet.
• 15:50
  Use listen notes, catalogue all this and you'll be able to get
• 15:54
  your learning done. That's if you're not one of
• 15:56
  those people who likes to just binge because I know some people
• 15:59
  who listen to the podcast because they come once in a week
• 16:02
  and then they binge on stuff. You know, since I'm putting out
• 16:05
  on average maybe like three to five episodes every week.
• 16:10
  So now, OK, there are other things we can look at process
• 16:14
  related issues. We've gone through people.
• 16:16
  Then there's process related issues, market related issues,
• 16:19
  organizational related issues. I think what we'll do is we'll
• 16:23
  continue with that tomorrow because I've noticed that a lot
• 16:26
  of the episodes I've done in the past 2-3 weeks, I've been 30
• 16:30
  minutes episodes. I've even done I think 240
• 16:32
  minutes episodes. And yeah, as much as some of you
• 16:36
  like here, my voice, I'm trying to be considerate of your time.
• 16:38
  Let's not take up too much of your time.
• 16:39
  So tomorrow, we will continue with process, market and
• 16:43
  organizational issues and then we will see what we can be done
• 16:46
  about them to improve sales performance.
• 16:49
  So that is all for today. Please connect with me on
• 16:52
  WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140.
• 16:57
  The country code is +234. For those of you who are not
• 17:00
  Nigerian, also connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 17:02
  My name is Tavi Shima Ayede, you can confirm the spelling of my
• 17:05
  name so you can search for me the right way on LinkedIn.
• 17:09
  You'll also get my e-mail address from the link where
• 17:11
  you're currently listening to this episode.
• 17:13
  Thank you very much for your time and attention.
• 17:14
  I will catch you at the next episode.