Does your sales team have what they need to target and engage customers, identify opportunities, and bring home signed contracts?
If you are committed to growing your business, every Seller must be laser focused on the right steps and best methods to close deals in their pipeline. I have identified five steps for sales enablement that will help your Sellers move the needle.
1. Stay in Your Lane
You have a strategy and have identified the markets and types of projects that you can execute profitably. Yet, the company continues to bid on work that is outside the swim lanes. It is easy to get distracted by tempting opportunities. For example, you get a call to join a team for a very large project that is outside your prime markets or geography. It looks good on paper and your very persuasive Seller convinces you that this could be the jewel in your portfolio.
What happens next is hundreds of hours spent on walk-downs, risk reviews, teaming meetings, bidding, and negotiating. Money lost when the contract goes to a firm that played the long game.
When you deviate from what you do best, the cost is high. Resources are wasted and morale is depleted.
2. Offer Results-based Solutions
Nothing happens until someone sells something. There are few grey areas in sales. You either win or lose; make the target or miss it. When Sellers don’t get results, it is hard to justify keeping them around.
When Sellers describe problems with a client or account, offer them solutions that get results. Talk about how to handle objections. Guide them through the next steps to advance the sale. Discuss strategies to use when a client or opportunity goes cold, and how to grow business within an account.
Consider how the Seller might be more effective by using technology or other time-saving techniques.
3. Provide Coaching and Training
Sales is a mental game. Strive to understand the psychology of sales and Sellers by hearing their challenges and goals.
Most companies bring the team together once a year and have weekly or bi-weekly meetings. Many also rely on emailed call reports.
While these are all helpful, high-performing companies use sales coaching programs to enable Sellers to get specific feedback, sharpen their skills, and improve their conversion rate.
4. Stay Informed of Evolving Customer Needs
Buyers of Engineering and Construction services, and other professional services firms, still rely on Sellers to identify the differences between various solutions and to help them realize the value of one supplier vs another. The buying organizations vary in size and structure so that Sellers often need more guidance on the best way to meet these complex customer needs.
For example, Sellers may need coaching on how to talk with a knowledgeable lead whose first contact is an inbound call made because they read your Website, but still aren’t clear about your service offering or value proposition.
Sellers also can inform the creation of marketing content by reporting customer feedback on collateral and recommending white papers and blog posts that address FAQs and repeated topics of interest.
5. Study the Data
Sit with your team each quarter and at year-end to discuss their challenges, targets, successes, and failures. Success leaves clues, but we tend to learn more from our failures.
Get their feedback on targets and goals. Are they realistic? What support do they need to achieve them?
By sharpening insights into customer needs, participating in regular reviews, and sharing Seller’s challenges, language, and process, you can enable your team to be more effective and create value for themselves, the company, and clients.
