Latest / Closing Sales in Nigeria - Sales For The Nigerian Business Person: The Sales and Marketing Blueprint / Boost Your Sales: Fix These Organizational Issues

Transcript

Boost Your Sales: Fix These Organizational Issues · 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 organizational issues that lead to declining sales
• 0:09
  performance and of course what to do about it.
• 0:12
  If this is your first time of listening to the show, then you
• 0:15
  have a few episodes that you need to get caught up on.
• 0:17
  One of them was where we looked at people related issues that
• 0:21
  causes your sales performance to go down.
• 0:25
  So that's when your sales people are the problem or maybe when
• 0:27
  you are the problem as the owner of the business or as the sales
• 0:30
  manager. Then we also looked at process
• 0:33
  related issues. You know, perhaps you guys don't
• 0:35
  have an efficient selling framework in place.
• 0:38
  You know, sometimes those are the problems, the reasons why
• 0:42
  teams are not performing. And then today we're going to
• 0:44
  look at organizational issues, problems with the organization
• 0:47
  itself that can lead to sales people performing poorly or to
• 0:52
  lead to overall sales not being all that great.
• 0:56
  So when we're looking at organizational issues, it can be
• 0:58
  a whole host of things. And remember, that's the reason
• 1:01
  why I said in previous episodes that I am not a business
• 1:05
  management consultant. So there's a limit to how much,
• 1:10
  how much of how will I put it? There's a limit to the opinions
• 1:16
  that I can have when it comes to this topic because it's not my
• 1:19
  area of specialty. But of course I can have
• 1:21
  opinions on things that tie in particularly to sales.
• 1:26
  So let's go ahead and look at some of the organizational
• 1:29
  issues. Now, sometimes one
• 1:31
  organizational issue that you have that is leading to poor
• 1:36
  sales performance for the business as a whole and for the
• 1:39
  sales team is because there's a misalignment between sales and
• 1:45
  marketing. Now we have roles in the
• 1:48
  business that are tied to sales. Well, the difference usually is
• 1:52
  that the sales role is the person who is interacting with
• 1:55
  the end user, with the final customer.
• 1:57
  So back to the example that I made, the example that I'd used
• 2:01
  in the previous podcast, I think about a woman owning an E tree,
• 2:05
  for instance. So the person who is interacting
• 2:10
  with the customers who come into the E tree, that's a sales role.
• 2:14
  Or if she has someone who goes out to other organisations to
• 2:17
  see if she can get catering opportunities, that's a sales
• 2:20
  role. While the marketing role is
• 2:23
  concerned with broadcasting, advertising, publishing messages
• 2:28
  out to the whole world to let everyone know that this business
• 2:32
  is around and this is what this business is about and this is
• 2:37
  how this business can help you. So that's the main difference.
• 2:40
  Marketing is focused on a whole. Marketing is very public.
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  You're talking to everyone, you're broadcasting messages,
• 2:49
  you're advertising. So excuse me.
• 2:52
  And then for sales, sales is one-on-one, you're talking to a
• 2:55
  particular customer. So you find that because these
• 2:58
  functions are different, most businesses try and unknowingly
• 3:04
  split them apart. But The thing is, they should be
• 3:07
  working together and well, they should be working together.
• 3:13
  So ultimately that's what we should be trying to do.
• 3:15
  We should try and see how our sales people and our marketing
• 3:18
  people are working under the same roof.
• 3:20
  So yes, in the office, they might have different sections of
• 3:25
  the office, but whether it's a daily or on a weekly basis, the
• 3:29
  sales and marketing people ought to be sitting together and
• 3:32
  having conversations. And the reason why is because if
• 3:35
  you let sales and marketing go off in different silos, they end
• 3:38
  up with different goals and they end up with different
• 3:40
  motivations. So that's the main reason why
• 3:43
  they don't collaborate. That's if you leave everybody
• 3:45
  apart. And that's because marketing, if
• 3:48
  you understood, if you understand the difference that I
• 3:51
  just tried to sure. Now between sales and marketing,
• 3:56
  you can see that marketing is always concerned about reach.
• 3:58
  How many people did we reach? How many 100 people?
• 4:01
  How many thousands, How many millions?
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  How many? This marketing people are always
• 4:05
  about reach, reach, reach. They want to see how many people
• 4:07
  did the message get to. Now, since sales is a one-on-one
• 4:11
  thing, sales people are not focused on how many millions of
• 4:15
  people saw it. They're concerned with this
• 4:17
  particular person that I'm talking to.
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  How close is this person to placing an order?
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  So a marketing or a social media manager for an egg farm, for
• 4:28
  instance, will be happy if they do something and they get one
• 4:30
  million impressions on Instagram.
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  But for the sales team, one million impressions on Instagram
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  doesn't mean Jack. If we got one million
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  impressions on Instagram but then we didn't even get 100
• 4:41
  orders from that, the sales team thinks, look, that's rubbish.
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  So yes, one million impressions, but how much money did we get?
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  So you can see that if you do not have a way of making sure
• 4:52
  that both teams are collaborating in your business,
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  then you can see the difficulties that are going to
• 5:00
  arise because the marketing team is looking at impressions of the
• 5:05
  sale teams. The sales team, they're focused
• 5:07
  on leads and orders. A lead is someone who put up his
• 5:10
  hand to say I might be interested in the product or the
• 5:13
  service. So that's all the sales person
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  is concerned about. Who raised their hand and how
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  much are these people going to pay?
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  So the solution is to plan your marketing campaigns with sales
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  people in the room, because the marketing people will come up
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  with all these brilliant, wonderful ideas to see how we
• 5:29
  can make a million people see what it is that the business
• 5:33
  does. But then the sales team is going
• 5:35
  to be looking about looking at these plans, and they're going
• 5:38
  to be focused on conversions. And the conversion is just what
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  is the next clear step that is going to take people closer to
• 5:45
  the sale. So if the marketing people are
• 5:49
  there and you, the business owner are there and you're
• 5:51
  prepared to answer these questions, then you can see that
• 5:57
  you wouldn't just be about generating a campaign that is
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  going to bring 1,000,000 people to the website because the sales
• 6:03
  people are going to say, OK, fine, if 1,000,000 people come
• 6:05
  to the website, what next? It is then that you guys can sit
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  down and say, oh, OK, if 1,000,000 people come to the
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  website, then there should be a landing page.
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  From the landing page, they're going to drop their e-mail
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  addresses and their phone numbers.
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  And if you take this extra step, it means they might be
• 6:21
  interested. So this is the point at which
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  sales and marketing people should.
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  Now this is the stage at which sales people should call up and
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  try and see if you can do business together.
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  So the solution is just to make sure that sales people are in
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  the room when we're planning all these fancy marketing campaigns
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  because marketing people will always be concerned about reach.
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  Did we see 1,000,000 people? Did we see 2 million people?
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  Did we see 3 million people, 3,000,000, Four million
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  impressions. It's success.
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  And in fact, the bigger the impressions, the more successful
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  the marketing team is going to feel.
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  But for sales people, if we did not get leads, somebody calling
• 6:57
  in, writing in or coming to the office to say how much are you
• 7:01
  guys available, do you do this, then that is not a success.
• 7:05
  And if not able to close business from that, then that is
• 7:07
  not a success. Now, of course, there's that
• 7:09
  whole thing of are the sales people properly trained and do
• 7:12
  they know how to handle these kinds of conversations?
• 7:15
  But these are things we already addressed on the first day when
• 7:20
  we were doing these series. We started off with the people
• 7:24
  part of the equation. So do we have the right people?
• 7:26
  Are they properly trained? So the solution, make sure that
• 7:30
  sales and marketing people are in the same room when these
• 7:34
  things are, when you're coming up with these ideas.
• 7:37
  Now another management problem, I already addressed it I think
• 7:43
  in people. Was it people or process?
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  I can't remember when we talked about compensation.
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  So sometimes the organization has an inadequate compensation
• 7:52
  plan, compensation plan that is not enough, it's unfair, doesn't
• 7:55
  involve motivate people. The page structure is wonky and
• 8:00
  since we've already addressed that in future sorry in previous
• 8:02
  episodes, there's no point in going that bringing that up
• 8:06
  again. But the summary of this is
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  whatever it is, don't mess with their competition compensation
• 8:11
  sales people's conversation because sales is hard enough.
• 8:14
  So stick to the plan. If you said monthly you're
• 8:16
  giving everybody 200K, then you know, on the 21st, on the 29th,
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  make sure you pay everybody that 200 K.
• 8:23
  But if what you agreed with them was there's going to be a base
• 8:26
  and then plus a Commission and then the base is paid on the
• 8:29
  29th, you know, 100K, then the Commission is paid.
• 8:33
  When you reconcile accounts, you know, two weeks later, then
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  stick to the plan. On the 29th, give them their
• 8:39
  base. Two weeks later, give them the
• 8:41
  Commission at their end. So when you start mocking up
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  with things, start trying to change things in the middle of
• 8:47
  1/4 or something, then this problem.
• 8:50
  So just stick to the plan, but then things change.
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  When things change, give the sales team a head up.
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  Okay guys, girls, this is what we agreed to.
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  So yes, I'm going to pay you the 100K now in two weeks, I'm going
• 9:01
  to pay you the Commission. But this is what is happening.
• 9:03
  Things are getting tough in the economy or this is how things
• 9:05
  are doing me. Things are doing me like this.
• 9:07
  Things are tricking me like this.
• 9:09
  So please, in two weeks time we're going to review.
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  That's a different thing than someone thinking it's the 29th.
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  I'm supposed to get 100K and then 80 K hits their account.
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  And then two weeks later they think my Commission is supposed
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  to be 150 K and then next thing you know, 132 K hits their
• 9:25
  account. So we need to make sure that,
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  excuse me now, we don't miss with people's pay structure and
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  their motivation. Now, of course, it's efficient
• 9:35
  sales support that's not having enough support for the sales
• 9:38
  people. We've also spoken about this in
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  the previous episode, so no need to go into this in much detail.
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  But basically this is where there's not administrative
• 9:46
  support or technical assistance for the sales team that you
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  have. This also creates a lack of
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  motivation and can cause things to go sideways because sales is
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  hard. So it's not a good thing when
• 10:01
  somebody goes out, does his best, brings in a customer hands
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  about the customer and then customer service people are now
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  behaving one kind towards the customer or the customer has a
• 10:13
  problem and then the technicians are not going out on time to
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  resolve the issues. You know, these sorts of things
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  mess with people's motivation. Like why am I going out
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  stressing myself getting all this business.
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  I bring the customer in house and then in house.
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  Now you guys, the ones that the guys are not messing up, you're
• 10:27
  messing up my reputation. So we need to make sure that
• 10:31
  there's administrative support, Technical Support, that's for
• 10:35
  those of you who are in the technical space.
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  So of course, well, actually even for people beyond the
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  technical space, because back to the restaurant example, you can
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  go out and you can talk to maybe Ministry of Finance or something
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  and you find out that the department is organising a
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  dinner to celebrate the HO DS birthday or something.
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  And you bring the deal back to the restaurant.
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  And then customer service is now messing up or restaurant staff
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  is now messing up, you know, they're showing up late or maybe
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  they didn't come dressed tidy or things like that.
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  So yeah, these are problems that all businesses can face.
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  So yeah, sales is hard. So provide admin support,
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  provide Technical Support, provide customer service
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  support, provide whatever support it is that the sales
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  people need. Also, recognition and support go
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  a long way. When somebody's doing a good
• 11:31
  job, you know, call them, you say hi equally, I saw what you
• 11:34
  did, you're a correct guy, you know, keep it up.
• 11:39
  Christiana, I saw what you did. You're correct, babe, I
• 11:42
  appreciate you. Keep it up.
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  Recognition and support also go a long way.
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  Then we have already done prior episodes on sales enablement.
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  So check the episodes that we've done so far.
• 11:54
  We have over 800 and sorry, 910 episodes so far.
• 11:58
  So just check. And there's a lot there about
• 12:01
  motivation, pay, sales enablement, things like that,
• 12:04
  and you get caught up to speed. So like I said, there's lots of
• 12:09
  stuff when it comes to management and organizational
• 12:12
  issues that can fall your hand as a business or as a business
• 12:16
  owner and negatively impact your sales performance.
• 12:21
  If you want a whole list of things that could go wrong, you
• 12:24
  should be talking to a management consultant if you
• 12:26
  have any concerns. But after you do that, of
• 12:28
  course, you can call me up and let's see what we can do about
• 12:31
  sales. So that's all pretty much for
• 12:34
  today. Then next you should be doing
• 12:39
  either listener questions or the list of topics I think are
• 12:41
  important. I'll have to check my my handy
• 12:45
  notebook, see what question is next and then I will move on to
• 12:48
  that. But either way, we should be
• 12:49
  expecting some new questions, especially related to artificial
• 12:53
  intelligence. And that's because I'm going to
• 12:55
  be talking at the SMEV con. That's a small and medium scale
• 13:01
  something I can't remember some conference anyway.
• 13:04
  And the topic this is about artificial intelligence and how
• 13:06
  you can use it to improve your business.
• 13:09
  So most likely I'm going to get a bunch of questions when I'm
• 13:12
  speaking at that forum, lots of AI related questions.
• 13:17
  And when I get those questions over there, I'll do my best to
• 13:19
  answer the questions over there. But then I'll also be making
• 13:22
  podcast episodes over here so we can share in the goodness that
• 13:27
  we talked about over there. I'll speak to the organizers and
• 13:29
  see if I can get the audio and put it in the podcast feed over
• 13:33
  here. But if they don't give it to me,
• 13:35
  then expect a bunch of questions to follow that will be
• 13:39
  artificial intelligence related and how we can use that to grow
• 13:44
  our businesses. So that's all for today.
• 13:46
  Please connect with me on WhatsApp.
• 13:47
  The phone number is 08064662140 and the country code is +234.
• 13:54
  Then connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 13:55
  My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show.
• 13:58
  You can get the correct spelling of my name.
• 14:00
  So you can search for the right person on LinkedIn by using the
• 14:04
  link where you're currently listening to this episode.
• 14:06
  My e-mail address is there. Thank you guys for your time and
• 14:09
  attention. I'll catch you guys at the next
• 14:10
  episode.