Over the past weeks I’ve been talking to various businesses about the strategies that they are developing for 2012 and beyond and in the light of continued hard times.

The one common factor in my discussions is that there seems to be a great emphasis on sales and sales team restructure to maintain growth. Identifying the successful sales team members isn’t difficult and identifying those that need replacing isn’t difficult either. The problem is that those at the top probably won’t be able to deliver more and those at the bottom are difficult to motivate.

Greatest potential growth
Possibly the greatest potential growth from a sales team will come from the average performers. That is those that are producing between 90% and 125% of their target on a regular basis. This is partly because this group tends to have more people in it than the top or the bottom and motivating them to produce more has the greatest potential for success.

Sales team restructure strategy
When developing strategies for a sales team restructure they should include changing territory, clients, working times, information and support given to the sales team and a good study of the recruitment process and criteria for those joining the team.

This video on sales and marketing interview questions might help

Quite a stir was caused this morning on Twitter when I suggested that Lack of talent is the biggest obstacle to growth but many businesses don’t have tools to find and keep talent in place.

A couple of people suggested that this Tweet was bull**t and that “Tools don’t find and keep talent; you need good managers for that”. A sentiment, by the way, that I wholly agree with! However, good management rarely operates on its own and often needs to use techniques, models, processes and past experience to guide actions and decisions and these I call “Tools”. In fact I would add that utilising tools in this way is a sign of “Good management”. Trying to manage without tools is often identified as “poor management”.

Now I enjoy having my thoughts and articles challenged and contradicted, it’s what makes for good debate and learning and I’ve got used to my “pearls of wisdom” being dismissed by those unable to understand the subtleties of what I’m saying, but I do wish that they would do so using logic and experience. “Bull**t” is so difficult to reply to! 

I was interested to read that the future of the government’s Work Programme “hangs in the balance” as research has revealed that 90 per cent of contracted Work Programme providers will miss their targets to get people back into work.

“The future of this vital employment scheme hangs in the balance,” said Ian Mulheirn, Director of the SMF.  “The programme aims to get some of the hardest to reach people off benefits and into work, but past performance shows that providers will be unable to meet the criteria required of them by the DWP”. As reported in Management Today

The statistic raises a number of questions:

• Were the targets too high?
• Were the providers promising too much in their application for the contract?
• Were the providers competent?
• Is the economic downturn so deep that it makes delivery impossible?
• Are employers just not employing?
  

No doubt the answers, arguments and “justification” will depend upon being in Government, Providers or DWP.
 
Perhaps they’ll all blame the unemployed!

Technorati Tags: employment, Ian Mulheirn, Management Today, work programme, unemployed, job, job serch

The
future of the government’s Work Programme “hangs in the balance” as
research has revealed that 90 per cent of contracted Work Programme providers will miss their
targets to get people back into work.

“The
future of this vital employment scheme hangs in the balance,” said Ian
Mulheirn, Director of the SMF.  “The programme aims to get some of the
hardest to reach people off benefits and into work, but past performance
shows that providers will be unable to meet the criteria required of
them by the DWP. As reported in Management Today

The statistic raises a number of questions:

• Were the targets too high?
• Were the providers promising too much when they applied for the contract?
• Were the providers competent?
• Is the economic downturn so deep that the job situation makes delivery impossible?
• Are employers just not employing
  

I’ve no doubt that the answers, arguments and “justification” will depend upon being in Government, Providers.
 
Perhaps they’ll all blame the unemployed!

I love working with new sales teams. In particular I enjoy planning how to to restructure a sales team to maximise sales.

Pertinent questions
Recently I was talking to a Sales Director that was concerned because his sales team, as a whole, wasn’t meeting target. Some of the team met their individual targets easily and exceeded them, others were average and some below average. The Sales Director was continually asking “Were the targets too high, Was the sales team capable of meeting the required results? or was the economy to blame?”. All very pertinent questions but ones that didn’t deliver the answers he was looking for.

Focussing on stars and passengers
In my experience a major reason why Sales Directors have problems with targets is because their focus is often confused by the stars and the passengers in their team (Stars are probably producing all they can and passengers simply reduce the good effect of the stars!).

Instead I persuaded him to focus on the group of people who are making “average Sales” and just below, which tends to be the larger number of people in any team. If this group could raise their sales by just 5% – 10% the effect can be to massively increase sales.
Action plan in the making!

email me: stephen@assimilating-talent if you would like a SKYPE call to discuss your sales team issues.

One of my best friends popped in for dinner last night. Over drinks we talked about how his business was managing with the financial downturn. Increases in unemployment, London riots and business difficulties were all discussed but I was delighted when he told me that his business was “Doing better than expected”. I heard about the new business plan that I expect will generate a healthy growth for the next year.

“What keeps me awake at night”
He’s managed to avoid laying people off work and whilst he wasn’t hiring people he was intending to restructure his team. The thing that was keeping him awake at night was that the restructure might cause some of his good people to leave. “I know jobs are hard to find right now but good people are still able to move quite easily” he explained.

5 Point Plan solution
After discussing much of the content of an article I wrote some months ago HERE for IQPC we talked about strategies for retaining his good people. In the end we settled on a five point plan. It would be specific to detail in this blog post but if you’d like to hear how we arrived at the solution then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com and we can arrange a SKYPE call and I can fill you in.