You don’t have a Sales Excellence Council?

by Todd Youngblood

According to the great baseball philosopher Yogi Berra, “You can see a whole lot just by looking.”  So I looked…

I looked at several hundred feedback forms from sales meetings and conferences conducted over the last few years. Interestingly, I saw words that I myself have written many, many times on similar feedback forms that inevitably ask which part of the sales meeting/seminar/conference was most valuable. Virtually always, the answer is something like, “Talking with my peers and learning about what they’ve done to generate more sales.”

Shocking. They didn’t find the intimate roundtable with the vice president of sales to be most valuable? The highly entertaining, $15,000 (plus first class airfare and other expenses, of course) outside expert speaker wasn’t the most valuable? The new sales guides and brochures based on extensive market analysis and brilliantly produced by the marketing department weren’t the highlight of the event?

Odds are that 99 percent of you, whose income is directly proportional to sales and/or sales growth, are not the least bit surprised. That’s what you usually write, right?

If that’s the timeless and universal feedback, why on earth is “Make sure we add more networking time to the next sales meeting/seminar/conference,” the unanimous directive of the sales executives who pay for these things? Is that the best we can do? Is that the most creative response possible?

Frankly, given the painfully obvious lack of creativity, I’m embarrassed to admit that I have issued that directive myself; way too many times. In effect, it’s abdicating responsibility. It’s using hope as a strategy. “I hope they’ll use that additional time to discuss business issues and not just engage in some extra social chit-chat.”

So what is the more business-like action plan? The answer lies in figuring out a way to put all this highly valued networking on steroids. To do that, let’s first take a more scientific, disciplined look at this peer networking. Why is it (accurately) perceived as being so useful and, on the flip side, what are the drawbacks? 

Here are the top five reasons it works so well.

Credibility of the source
If someone I respect is talking about something that works for him or her, I’ll be all ears and focused on learning everything I possibly can.

The good, the bad and the ugly
Respected peers will give me the whole story and won’t hold back insight into the risks and down-side potential.

Real world
It’s a pragmatic, real story from the front lines, as opposed to some big shot’s pet project.

Timely
In a face-to-face situation, I can ask, hear and talk about what’s happening right now and how I might address today’s challenges.

It’s how reps communicate
Sales reps are used to, most comfortable and typically best at communicating and learning verbally.

Now let’s take a look at the top five weaknesses of verbal, peer-to-peer networking.

I forgot
Typically, nothing gets written down, I get flooded with a hundred new ideas and there are multiple crises waiting for me when I get back, so I just never get around to implementing that great idea.

Lots of important details are missing
In an unstructured conversation, many key questions are not asked and critical parts of the strategy are simply missed.

One-to-one
Some of the best ideas and strategies get discussed in one-on-one conversations. That’s an extremely inefficient way to disseminate information.

Baloney
Hard as it might be to believe, sales reps will sometimes exaggerate the effectiveness of an idea or embellish their own brilliance just a bit.

Not measurable
Face it, networking time is for all intents and purposes free time and is very expensive. Since management is by definition not part of every conversation, management cannot know what gets discussed, what details get missed or how much time is wasted. It is not possible to take even a wild guess at the ROI.

A Sales Excellence Council is "Networking on Steroids"
The mission of a Sales Excellence Council (SEC) is to generate an 8 percent to12 percent annual, incremental increase sales performance. It is comprised of four to six of your best sales personnel and meets monthly for two to four hours. Its job is to identify key issues, inhibitors and opportunities and to formally capture the sales best practices that consistently produce excellent results. The work of the SEC is formally documented in a “Sales Knowledge Mine” and made immediately accessible to everybody via a secure Web site.

It sounds fairly simple and straightforward because it is. There’s no magic. The key is methodical, relentless discipline in leveraging the skills, knowledge and instincts of your best performers. It’s this discipline that is sorely lacking in traditional networking.

Quite often a professional facilitator can provide additional leverage. This individual is responsible for channeling the SEC’s focus toward key goals, organizing the best practices and documentation according to the organization’s overall sales process and handling all logistics. The facilitator can also challenge the group to reach beyond the toughest constraints and encourage a friendly competition that produces continuously better results.

The must striking aspect of the SEC concept is how obvious it is that having one is essential. Why would any sales leader not aggressively tap into the minds of the best and brightest? Isn’t it abundantly clear that the best performers follow the best-known sales process, implement the best-known practices and continuously figure out ways to get even better? Why not write down all this wisdom and make it easier for everybody to emulate the eagles?

Think about it: A formal SEC preserves the strengths of traditional rep-to-rep networking and removes the weaknesses. The elite nature of the council membership ensures credibility, relevance, timeliness and a realistic approach to making things happen. The formality of the process ensures completeness, disciplined follow-up, measurability and a distinct lack of extraneous fluff. The Sales Knowledge Mine provides for instantaneous availability of the best, most effective information.

An SEC will put more commission cash into everybody’s pockets. And as Yogi says, “Cash is a lot like real money.” So when will your SEC have its first meeting?

Todd Youngblood is Managing Partner and CEO of The YPS Group Inc., a sales process engineering and sales training firm. The YPS partners are all obsessed with the sales productivity of their clients. He can be reached at (770) 514-1189, todd@ypsgroup.com or at www.ypsgroup.com.

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