Let’s say you have a great business. You have a great product, a great service-and you’re going to kill the market. You’re making money, and your business is growing because people are loving what you’re doing. And you’re growing, and growing and growing, but the next thing you know – it’s all GONE. It’s just, gone. Why is that?
It’s a very common thing, actually. In all the focus on sales and marketing, a business easily falls into a state of chaos that spirals out of control. You see, most people who are great at selling and promoting aren’t good at accountability and systems. Yet, accountability and systems are what get your business from a state of chaos to stability and affluence, supporting successful, profitable growth.
Being a successful entrepreneur requires the ability to move from chaos to stability. And it’s not just true for business — accountability and systems work in your health and relationships, too.
Let’s look at how we can implement accountability and systems in your sales.
I believe one of the best motivational tools for salespeople is the Monday morning sales meeting. As a young, new salesperson (when I was just starting out), my company had to make sure I had a tight operating system to work within, and that I would be held accountable for my efforts. We had something we called the 5-call close, and it looked something like this:
COLD CALL: The purpose of a cold call was qualify the lead and book an appointment.
APPOINTMENT: The purpose of the appointment was to book a demonstration.
DEMONSTRATION: The demonstration was designed to get the prospect to ask for a presentation or proposal.
PRESENTATION: The presentation was designed to outline all the aspects of the service or product being offered so we could agree to move forward and ask for the sale (close).
CLOSE: The ultimate goal of getting a signed agreement for purchase.
Essentially, you can’t master the close unless you have mastered the first step, the cold call, then the appointment, then the demonstration, etc.
So, the 5-call close was the system. The accountability portion was every Monday, I had to go up there and present to everyone the results of my efforts — that made me accountable to my numbers. There is an example below:
Sales Grid Example
| Cold calls | Appointments | % | Demonstrations | % | Presentations | % | Close | % |
| 75 | 15 | 20 | 5 | 33 | 4 | 80 | 0 | 0 |
The meeting motivated me to want to deliver better numbers each week, because I was being held accountable in front of my entire team.
There are many benefits to having a system and being held accountable to it. For one, you know your sales cycle. Many businesses I’ve worked with don’t have one, and that’s unfortunate because the system will help you target areas of opportunity. Otherwise, you’d just hand out brochures to your sales team and say, Have at it, folks! That simply won’t work.
Looking at the sales grid (as I call it) above, it’s easy to see where the opportunities to learn and grow are. For example, I could definitely benefit from learning to improve the percent of appointments I set from my cold calls (20%). I could also improve the percent of clients I close after making presentations (0%!).
Now, please note: Accountability is NOT about saying you are a GOOD person or a BAD person. Accountability is simply taking responsibility for what you have done. If you write 0 for closes for the week on the sales grid, you are being accountable for the fact you have no closes. If you write nothing, you are not being accountable for your numbers.
When you are accountable to your numbers, the sales grid will help your Sales Manager quickly see the areas that with improvement could vastly enhance results (which means more revenue for the company and more commission in your pocket).
This grid is applicable for any kind of business. Let’s say your business doesn’t rely on cold calls. Maybe in your business, it’s customers that come through the door, inbound calls you have received, how many have registered for an event, etc. Or maybe it’s presentations you give, and the number of offers you hand out, and the number of follow-ups, etc. The point is to define your own sales system and hold your team accountable to mastering each part of it.
Once you have your sales cycle is systematized, it is easy to hold sales people accountable so you can see where you are leaving money on the table. By identifying where they can improve and potentially by how much (improve a close rate from 0% to 10%), you can predict what the incremental revenue will be as they improve their mastery of the sales process.
Want to track your sales process on your own Sales Grid so you can master your sales system and hold your sales people accountable Click here to access a free Sales Grid template with built in formulas to help you track your teams results and hold them accountable.
You can also Download my free Income Calculator to help determine how to achieve your specific sales revenues goals. This is a great tool once you have used the Sales Grid to track your current success ratios for each step of your sales system.
Need some guidance on how to make this work for your specific business? Click here to schedule a free 45-Minute Consultation with a Blair Singer Certified Coach.
