Thursday, March 26, 1998

How to motivate a sales force

By PAUL TULENKO

Scripps Howard News Service

We've all heard of the Wonder Kid who can sell sand in Arabia or refrigerators in Antarctica. But actually finding one for your business can be as hard to do as ... well, selling sand in Arabia or refrigerators in Antarctica!

If you truly want to improve sales, you will have to change your whole attitude toward your sales force, your customers and your company.

Not all, but many firms have the belief that selling goods and services is the task of the sales force with a little help from the marketing department. At high level meetings the CEO often turns to the sales vice president with words like: "Why aren't your people selling our new widget? With as much as we pay them, they ought to be out there in the field contacting new customers, and all I hear are excuses." Then comes the threat, veiled or outright: "If things don't pick up pretty soon... "

All this kind of talk will get you is turnover, inconsistent sales, anger and inaction. Here are some tips that can dramatically change the selling atmosphere at your company, improve the bottom line and foster the development of your own group of Wonder Kids:

- Changing focus: The focus of your company must change from selling widgets to one of active competition. Your mystical and great-sounding mission statement looks good in print, but probably means nothing to either your customer or your sales force. You must replace this antique with a reality statement such as, "Our goal is to replace XYZ Company as the No. 2 company in our industry!"

Without this extremely narrow focus, you don't stand a chance of motivating your sales force to action. This change of view probably will engender a fight at the board level, but unless you make a decision to do something concrete, and let your sales force know the goal, you are barking up the wrong tree!

- Finding your customer: Do you really know who your customer is? Are you assuming Jane and Jim Doe are the buyers? Are you ignoring the fact that your real buyers may be the wholesale, retail or franchise establishments that stock and sell your widget? Without a realistic analysis, your sales force is out there beating the bushes for squirrels when the real prey should be a lion.

- Targeting your customer: People are going to buy widgets. The question is: "Who's going to sell the widgets?" First find, then target, the widget seller. Then help them sell! Make it attractive and easy for the prime buyer of your widgets to sell to the end user. Develop a sales force that concentrates on the bulk sale, not the onesies and twosies.

- Supporting your sales force: Begin the change by giving your sales force a real target. Try something like: "Our goal is to become No. 2 in the Eastern Division by outselling brand X by December." Don't be ridiculous with your goal; if you are No. 13, shoot for replacing No. 12, not No. 1. Your sales force needs attainable goals, not pie-in-the-sky, and believe me, they know the difference!

Pay your sales force well for increasing product sales. Highly paid sales people work very hard to maintain their high life style. Low pay gets you low-motivation, and that results in low sales, unprofitability and keeps you down there at No. 13.

- Make it easy to buy: Get the bureaucrats out of the way of the sale! Set up a realistic criteria for a customer, write-in the "if this happens, we do this" clauses, help your sales force understand what these mean, and then stand back and count the sales. They will happen! Yes, your goal is profitable sales. Don't ignore the bureaucrats, but do temper their typical ennui with customer love ... it pays!

- Support your customers: Set up or modify a division in your company dedicated to helping your customers. Provide immense latitude for problem solving. Give this division the task of keeping customers happy with your product, your service and especially your sales force. Also give this new division the task of pursuing disenchanted customers of your competition. There's always something wrong with your competition's service or product, and if you actively help potential customers to solve their problems, you can replace Brand X with your widgets.

- Maintain contact: It is important to keep your customer base advised of every move you make that could affect their bottom line. Ask for and act on input. Feed problems back to your customers and ask for solution suggestions. If you don't have a customer Web site, get one started today, and keep it current daily. Anything less means you probably don't really care.

(Questions can be directed to Paul Tulenko by e-mail at www.tulenko.com or by mail with SASE to The Albuquerque Tribune, PO Drawer T, Albuquerque, NM 87103.)