How to Get Salespeople to Call on The Right Customers

Four Qualification Mistakes
Your Salespeople Are Probably Making Today
and What You Can Do About It

I’m Michael Webb, and I'm the author of "Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way" (Kaplan, 2006). My team and I have helped dozens of companies in North America sell more of the right customers at higher margins and lower costs by applying the concepts of lean and six sigma to their sales and marketing departments: large companies, like Thermo Fischer Scientific, medium-sized companies, like MAQUET, and a variety of smaller companies as well.

Ellen Bristol founded Bristol Strategy Group in 1995, after a 27-year career in sales and marketing for major mainframe computer manufacturers Sperry Univac (now Unisys) and Digital Equipment Corporation (now Hewlett-Packard). Ellen had a personal mission to create effective sales organizations by adopting the benefits of formal process management and continuous improvement, fields of management science that had largely bypassed the sales function. She has become a thought leader in this area, innovating ways to make the sales process more effective through the use of customer intelligence and process disciplines to drive global strategy and improve organizational outcomes.

Companies expect their salespeople to work hard these days. And most salespeople feel it is their responsibility to try hard. Really hard.

Unfortunately, this sometimes means trying to sell anything that moves, churning out proposal after proposal.

Are your salespeople burning midnight oil on business your company does not want?

Qualification criteria is included in sales 101, right? So, why do so many salespeople and companies struggle with situations like these:

• So-called “good prospects”  that just never progress toward success
• Lots of deals on the sales funnel, yet not making the numbers
• Competitors steal the business at the last minute
• Orders come in with unacceptable margins or lead times

Good sales managers and salespeople already know what qualification criteria is. Chances are they’ve had sales training on it, and even in-depth discussions about qualification at their sales meetings.

Yet, what should you do if the sales team still can’t make the forecast, or if salespeople can’t – or won’t – use the qualification criteria they already have?

Here are some questions you need to know the answer to:

• How do you know which qualification criteria are the right ones for your company?
• How do qualification criteria improve sales results, in real life?
• How can you use qualification criteria to measure improvements in productivity?
• How can you identify what inhibits your sales productivity?
• Most importantly, how do you get salespeople to USE qualification criteria properly?

This Thursday, August 6, at 11:00am Eastern time, Ellen Bristol and Michael Webb will present a unique webinar:

Four Qualification Mistakes
Your Salespeople Are Probably Making Today
and What You Can Do About It

Registered participants to this webinar will discover

• The results of studies of causes of poor sales productivity
• How to calculate the value of salespeople’s time
• Qualification criteria models for analyzing and measuring sales productivity
• How to use qualification criteria to improve sales productivity
• Methods for encouraging salespeople to use the right criteria, prioritize the right accounts, and increase their productivity

The webinar will be a spirited discussion between two consultants with experience in hundreds of companies and dozens of industries, including non-profit.   Don’t miss the valuable and unique insights you’ll hear about in this webinar.

Here’s what other attendees have said about SPIF! Webinars:

“It provided me with more robust tools to begin to shape out a project I have been working on in improving our sales approach overall.”
Ruthann, Corporate Executive, Missouri

“You get beyond the conceptual and get to REAL documents and steps that you use. I have designed a couple of sales processes and am currently tweaking my own process for finding, winning and keeping customers for my consulting biz.”
Mike, Consultant, Iowa

“As usual Michael, you got right to the heart of the matter and the difficulties that the sales function is faced with.  Excellent.”
Andrew Wilcock, Cranfield University

“Your webinar gave me a strategy for testing out a nurturing campaign in my organization.
I liked the dialogue format – kept me engaged the entire hour.”
Mary Lou Joseph, Verint

You’ll receive immediately actionable information that will change the way you manage your organization. Registered participants who complete the workshop evaluation will receive a pdf file of the presentation slides and a recording of the event, in addition to special offers on information products that can improve the productivity of your sales and marketing organization.

The content in these calls is also excellent for anyone who is analyzing their sales process/organization to determine what kind of outside help might be needed.