Let’s sing a ditty! Ready? “You hate selling, I hate selling, we all HATE selling!” Correct? And yet we all LOVE regular commercial carpet cleaning accounts! Time for sales management …
So inspiration strikes! “I know- I’ll hire a sales person to do the nasty dirty work of selling!” Good? NO! Bad! Because sales people often become “Loose Cannons” that slack off, underbid, screw up and/or don’t close accounts you would have sold! So you must…
“Intensely manage” your sales force.
You must first “make it easy” with the sales resources I recently shared HERE. Now that your sales force knows WHAT to do you must make sure they DO IT!
How? Sales management means holding your sales people accountable! NOTE: Too often we hire a sales person and then “abdicate” our sales management responsibilities.
#1 Develop clearly defined expectations before you hire. Ask your sales candidates, “What sales goals do you feel are reasonable?” (Many times they will set their bar higher than you would have!) Examples: Number of new contacts per week, closed sales, profit margin on sold jobs, etc.
#2 Meet with each sales person at least twice per week. Review their sales route for the week ahead and then on Friday analyze their results and give advice on difficult accounts.
#3 Implement online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. This gives you a “diary” of their sales contacts and results BUT you must check it daily.
#4 Tie sales compensation to profitability. Otherwise sales people will underbid contracts to build their gross sales and you’ll be paying them to lose money! (This is important.)
#5 Celebrate their wins! Selling is a grueling profession full of rejection. (That’s why you don’t like sales. Remember?) So give lots of “atta-boys” and Public Recognition (motivation!) on new sales.
#6 Put the Law of Massive Action to work. One way is by hiring several part time sales people. Then make it a “horse race”!
NOTE: Do all of the above and your contract commercial work will EXPLODE! So better git yer “production efficiency” tuned up HERE!
Steve