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Improving Sales Performance
Why Are Organizational Goals Becoming Harder to Achieve? with Stephanie Downs
In this episode, we’re once again diving into The 5th Annual Media Sales Report by The Center for Sales Strategy.
Today, we’re exploring why sales managers are experiencing such increased difficulty in achieving organizational goals.
Joining Matt to discuss that and so much more is Stephanie Downs, SVP/Senior Consultant here at CSS.
Stephanie provides such valuable insights, like:
- How a sales manager’s calendar should reflect a strategy of developing and coaching their people
- Why we often make recruitment harder on ourselves by not having a firm plan in place
- And, finally, why adding more people to your sales team is not always the solution
Links:
The 5th Annual Media Sales Report
Stephanie Downs
Matt Sunshine
The Center for Sales Strategy
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize, and maybe even exceed, their goals. Here we chat with thought leaders, experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. I'm your host, matt Sunshine, ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company. In this episode, we're once again diving into the fifth annual media sales report by the Center for Sales Strategy.
Matt Sunshine:Today we're exploring why sales managers are experiencing such increased difficulty in achieving organizational goals. Joining me to discuss that and so much more is Stephanie Downs, svp, senior Consultant here at CSS. Stephanie provides such valuable insights like how a sales manager's calendar should reflect the strategy of developing and coaching their people, why we often make recruitment harder on ourselves by not having a firm plan in place and, finally, why adding people to your sales team is not always the solution. With that, let's get the conversation started. So in the most recent media sales report the fifth annual media sales report we learned that 81% or the data suggested that 81% of sales managers say that achieving their company, their organizational goals is becoming even more difficult. So here are the questions for you what are you seeing that might be causing that and what advice do you have for the sales managers that might be listening to this, who are those 81% that are struggling to meet their organizational goals?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. So a couple of conversations that I'm having pretty frequently related to this topic, because it's coming up a lot recently is Coach the Coach and I'll come back to that in a second and what's being tracked, just from a leading indicator standpoint and from an accountability standpoint. And also structure hearing lots of things about is my structure working today and are changes needed? So, from an advice standpoint, I'm going to start with the Coach the Coach piece of that, because that seems to be coming up a lot lately.
Stephanie Downs:If I was a sales leader, I would pay attention to my calendar. Here's what I mean by that. I would look at my calendar and say does my calendar reflect the strategy of developing and coaching people or does my calendar reflect something very different from that? My guess is that it may not reflect the strategy of coaching and developing people, and our people are our biggest asset. They should be where we're investing the majority of our time. So that would be one thing.
Stephanie Downs:Something else that I would recommend on that is from a structure standpoint, because there's a lot of conversations about changing of structures. I would just ask yourself a few simple questions of is your current structure doing what it was designed to do? And, if not, think about your three KPIs, your paying attention to your performance metrics, whatever those are, thank you. What of those threes are not being achieved and what in the structure is not supporting that? And so, whether that's the number of people or new positions needed, or a lead generation strategy, I mean there could be a number of different things, but I would start with that calendar strategy and asking yourself a couple simple questions about structure.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I it's. It's interesting conversation and and we certainly hear this again and again and again and the coaching mindset, yeah, it's becoming increasingly more important. The I read. I'm a big fan of John Gordon and John Posted something on LinkedIn yesterday where he said he is having a conversation with John Maxwell, the author, and he said to John Maxwell how do you do it Like you're, you're brilliant, right. And um, john Maxwell said to him you know, it's consistency, consistency and and consistency compounds. That's right. Yeah, I love that right. And so I read that as a consistent compound, saying, oh, that's so Careful thing. Coaching someone one time, don't, don't bother. I mean, okay, I gave him coaching check. No, it's a, it's a constant commitment, that's right. Coaching, yeah, consistency compounds, coaching.
Stephanie Downs:Frequency yeah, yeah all right.
Matt Sunshine:so digging deeper into the media sales report Um, recruitment always going to be a topic, yeah, we find ourselves talking about, and in some years it's it's, uh, easier, in some years it's harder. Some years you're needing to hire more people, other years You're not needing to hire as many people. But, yeah, 43% of sales managers still say it is the hardest part of their job. Um, whether it is hard out there, whatever it, 43 percent just under half are saying it's the hardest part of the job. So what can managers do to make this part of their job a little easier? And how can managers Better recruit while keeping uh and I on achieving those organizational goals?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, yeah, um. So I agree it is hard out there. I don't want to minimize the fact that it's hard out there, but I think we also make that harder on ourselves too, because we don't have Um a plan in place for it, right? Or we do it when we have open positions and not all year round. We should be doing that all the time and building our talent bank, right, um, and I think that sales leaders also fill the pressure that they have to do it all themselves.
Stephanie Downs:Don't do it in a vacuum. Get people to help you, right. Have a team. Ask your employees, create employee incentive plans to to get referrals from them. Ask clients for referrals. Use nominator questions to make the efforts when you are recruiting Better. Don't just say who are the best sales people. You know that. Call on you, um. Who are those that Problem solve on a regular basis. Who has the best ideas? Who, um are naturally inquisitive, you know. Think about what that Outbound effort looks and sounds like. But you know it goes back to even what we were saying earlier about your strategy on the calendar. You have to put 60 minutes on the calendar every week that you are actively having candidate conversations or that you're searching on social media or reaching out to clients, whatever that is, but you got to have a strategy to support it.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, absolutely, um, yeah, absolutely, and and I know you're getting ready to, uh, to lead talent focus management, like this week today, and that'll be, uh, this will be one of the things that I know you're gonna focus on and I think that every one of the biggest takeaways that that is, that is shared at the end of every talent focus management workshop that CSS has ever done and I don't know how many CSS has done. I would imagine that we've probably run that workshop a couple of hundred times. Yeah, over the years, right over the last 40 years. Um, I Would say 100% of the time at the end of that workshop when we go around the room and say biggest takeaways Talent Bank.
Stephanie Downs:Talent Bank every single time. Yeah, and and I think that's when I was saying they make it harder on themselves. They know they need to be doing it, they just don't always do it. This falls into the category of just doing.
Matt Sunshine:Right, just do it, make it a priority.
Stephanie Downs:Make it a priority and 60 minutes on your calendar every week do it. Yeah.
Matt Sunshine:I do know of one general manager in in the broadcast broadcast arena that Every single one of his sales manager, or their sales managers, is required to spend 60 minutes a week on recruitment required and required to report Outcomes and you know with that too, more senior leaders and organizations, general manager, etc.
Stephanie Downs:Make that part of your weekly one-on-one with your sales leaders. Have them bring to those meetings when you think about the agenda for those meetings, have that as part of the regular conversation. How many candidate conversations Did you have this week? How much time did you spend? How many people do you have in your talent bank? Make that part of the weekly agenda 20 years ago.
Matt Sunshine:20 years ago, when I worked at a Radio broadcaster I worked at Susquehanna radio I had an MBO that was paid monthly, monthly, and all I had to do to earn that monthly MBO is Show my updated talent bank and highlight, put in yellow, the new people that had been added to it. As long as there was it, there were at least a minimum number of people that I would earn my MBO.
Stephanie Downs:I like it, it, it's not, and there's nothing new but it truly falls into the what gets measured gets done.
Matt Sunshine:Hey, you want that MBO, here you go. All you have you can keep an updated talent bank. Yeah, love that. Yeah, all right. So Size of sales teams here's the question. So 53% just over half 53% of sales managers say they are Disatisfied with the size of their sales team. Okay, so that could mean that they think they're too big or too small, they're just Disatisfied with the size. So do you think the size of the sales team can determine the overall whether or not you achieve your goals, or is it more of a talent issue? It's not that you need more people, you just need more talented people. Which one? Both? How does that work?
Stephanie Downs:Can I say yes, no, and both Can. The size of the sales team impact performance for sure.
Stephanie Downs:I mean if you have too few people, like genuinely, you have an open position and you have more? Yes, of course that can impact it right. If you have too many people, that can impact it as well. And it's not easy to find the perfect number. Let's be honest, it's a hard place to find the exact right number. Let's be honest, it's a hard place to find the exact right number. But adding people to the team is not always the solution. It's not, and I think a lot of sales leaders default to that. I need more people. I need more people in the street. I need more people calling on people. It's not always the solution.
Stephanie Downs:Couple of thoughts on it From a talent standpoint, a little bit of a twist on that. I would think more about the stamp, more about do you have non-performers on the team? Are there people that are not consistently performing? And I know, matt, you and I've had this conversation a number of times, but think how often we've heard not everybody on the team can be an A player. That that drives me crazy. It's like, yes, it's like fingers on it, nails on a chalkboard, right?
Stephanie Downs:My immediate response is why not? It doesn't mean that it's easy to have all A players on the team, but we should have the mindset that we should have all A players on the team and strive to get there. So, with your really thinking about the size of your sales team, I would start with really doing some performance analysis over a period of time of looking at everybody and how they're contributing to the overall organization. And if you have C players, get them to be a, b or an A player, or consider moving them out of the organization, et cetera. B to A have the mindset of all A players.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, you know the other. You're exactly right, it drives me absolutely, that's that is nails on a chalkboard. The other thing that strikes me about this is sometimes sales teams. What I've seen is sales teams, sales. There might be fewer sales people, but sales teams have expanded right. So so we're in the. In the old days, five years ago, you had seven sales people and two assistants, so you had nine people. Today maybe you have five sales people, but you have two account managers, a specialist and a sales manager yeah.
Stephanie Downs:Well, it goes back to what we were saying earlier in the conversation about structure. Right, the, the siloed sales structure, is not working. It hasn't worked for years, but it is definitely not working today. And I think that's really where you have to step back and say you know, do you need a lead generation strategy? Do you have the right strategy for growing key accounts and super serving key accounts? Do you have the right strategy to support solution selling or a strategy structure? When I say strategy, I mean structure.
Stephanie Downs:The and if you're not thinking about structure changes, even the number of people reporting to a sales leader. It probably should be.
Matt Sunshine:So years ago I don't remember what year Jim hopes the full-time president for sales strategy wrote a white paper.
Stephanie Downs:That was a lot of years ago.
Matt Sunshine:Right about the lone wolf sales model and I don't remember. I bet that's 15 years ago.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, he was right then.
Matt Sunshine:And it was that's right. He was right then, it's still right. So if you're listening to this, you should go to our website, or I bet, if you just Google lone wolf, I bet, if you Google it, yeah. Lone wolf sales approach by the center for sales strategy. I bet you find it. I bet it comes up.
Matt Sunshine:All right. Next question 90% of salespeople and 74% of sales managers are looking for hybrid work in one form or another. Most people are not saying that they want to be remote and most people are also saying they don't want to be in office. Most people 90% of salespeople, 74% of sales managers hybrid in one form or another. What do you think of this, and do you think where people are working has an impact on their ability to achieve their goals?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, so the first part of that it's not surprising. Really, there's lots of research out there. I mean, this is one data point of it, but there's a lot of research to say that. So it's not surprising. But as I was thinking about this question coming in today, I really had a little bit of a twist of a takeaway on this one. It's more of what you do with that information, and here's what I mean by that.
Stephanie Downs:We've experienced this with a number of our clients. It's the inconsistency in having a plan for your organization, meaning don't say we're gonna be back in the office full time and then allow some people not to be back in the office full time. Don't say we're gonna be a completely work from home organization and then say, well, we really need everybody in a day or two and wait. Have a plan and stick to it. The inconsistency of your plan does more harm in just saying this is the way that it's going to be. So that's one thing. But also consider it when you are recruiting Full disclosure to the candidates that you're recruiting, right when you're looking. But there's different people who want different things. Just know what yours is and know what's important to the candidate. So just full disclosure from that standpoint.
Stephanie Downs:And back to the second part of your question about does it impact the ability to achieve goals. It shouldn't. It can but it shouldn't. And here's a couple of things with that. You may need different processes in place. You may need different talents for some salespeople. We learned through the early years of COVID, when everything was worked from home. We learned that discipline from a talent standpoint was way more important than it's always important, let's be honest. But it came to life more. How's that? Because if people aren't in the office, so you may need some talents may be more mandatory than they needed to be before, processes may look a little differently, but it shouldn't impact organizational goals. If you're paying attention to the right things, tracking the right things, the performance should still follow, and if it's not, then other things need to change.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, and I think that you're right. The number one, or one of the most important things is certainly to be very transparent on this. Is what we do here. Right, yeah, and leaving it vague.
Stephanie Downs:It's not good.
Matt Sunshine:It's not good and I understand why leadership sometimes wants to be vague, because they don't want to seem heavy-handed and they don't want to feel like they're mandating things, and I get that. But all you're doing is frustrating everybody else by doing that.
Stephanie Downs:That's right yeah.
Matt Sunshine:Right, Because everyone is waiting for someone to say here are the rules.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah.
Matt Sunshine:And just give us the rules. Let us play.
Stephanie Downs:Transparency, transparency, transparency.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, all right. So, stephanie, thank you so much for joining the podcast today, really appreciate your insights. You are so valuable and so appreciated. So thank you for joining us and thank you everyone for listening or watching. We really appreciate you. Please tune in for the net. We are going through the entire Media Sales Report and producing several of these podcasts that are specifically on the Media Sales Report. So thanks for listening to this one, but make sure you listen to the others as well, and we'll see you again on another Improving Sales Performance podcast. This has been Improving Sales Performance. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, join us every week by clicking the Subscribe button For more on the topics covered in the show. Visit our website, thecenterforsalesstrategycom. There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance.
