Are you a sales manager? If so, I have a question for you. Do you know what the Times Square subway station and the U.S. Army have in common? (Other than that recruiting station on 42nd Street, I mean.)
Let’s start with the Army. Suppose you ran your team a little bit more like the Army runs its teams. Suppose you managed your team by specific, narrow “matrix deployments.” Would that be better than dropping team members into a vast geographical territory, with little or no emphasis on the discipline necessary to get the job done, walking away, and waiting for a report back?
When the Army deploys forces, it doesn’t just distribute people in green uniforms at random. It identifies a specific geographical focus and subdivides that zone into smaller and smaller areas. The Army then does the job one foot at a time. Instead of attacking at random, or leaving one person in charge of hundreds of square miles, the Army focuses in a disciplined way on a single, specific, high-priority targeted area, and it repeats the process until the job is done.
Here’s another example of what I mean. When the administration of Rudy Giuliani decided that it was time to get serious about combating crime in New York, it didn’t just throw lots of bureaucrats at the city as a whole. Instead, it subdivided the city into quadrants, and then set some priorities. The Giuliani administration went after the lower end criminals and quality of life issues first, and they did so in specific, carefully targeted areas of the city. They did this because they knew that ignoring supposedly “little” problems – like turnstile-hopping at the Times Square subway station -- led to an environment that supported much larger crimes.
That environment was what Giuliani wanted to change. He carefully targeted his resources on a few clearly defined tasks in a few clearly defined areas – like the subway at Times Square. He kept it up over time. The end result was a dramatic decrease in overall crime numbers, and within a very short period of time, the “impossible” had happened, and New York City was one of the safest cities in America.
“That’s all fascinating, Steve … but how can sales managers use any of this to increase sales?”
Here’s my answer. Invest your resources – namely, your own time and attention – strategically, the same way that the Army picks an area for deployment … and the same way Giuliani picked Times Square. Just as Giuliani focused on elements that defined the culture of a neighborhood, you should start by acknowledging that your salespeople should concentrate first on the single “zone” of activity that will have the most dramatic impact when it comes to transforming the culture of your organization. Your people should concentrate on the critical skill of gaining new appointments with new prospects. That’s the most strategically important zone of the matrix.
Each of your people must work on honing that skill until he or she can do it well -- and can deploy that skill in such a way that it doesn’t take them three days to get a meeting with a single interested person.
Train and reinforce your team’s with this part of the sales “matrix” first. Drill your salespeople over and over again in effective prospecting strategies. (It may help to read my book Cold Calling Techniques That Really Work.)
Make prospecting a hard-wired skill, so that the salesperson never has to think of what to say when calling for appointments, and is ready to handle all the objections that commonly occur on the phone. I’ve trained hundreds of thousands of salespeople in this skill, and I can assure you that a full 80% of the objections people hear over the phone really can be handled simply and directly. So don’t worry about the rest. Simply leave the other 20% alone, and train your people to make two good attempts to turn around the common objections, and then immediately ask for an appointment at a specific date and time. If two attempts don’t get the appointment, they should move on to the next call. (As opposed to, say, instantly calling back when someone hangs up, which is a total waste of time.)
Once that component of the “matrix” has been addressed, focus everything you’ve got on the presentation that the rep will be making. Pull one of these presentations out and look it over. Does it work? Is the rep ready for everything that will be thrown at him or her? Is the person able to anticipate the most common outcomes in the typical sales meeting? Do they know how to create the conversation during the first appointment that will get them the second appointment? If not, you may rest assured that your people need skill reinforcement in this zone of the sales “matrix.”
You say they’ve got those two zones down? Great. It’s time to get to work on the third zone of the sales matrix, which has to do with the value of the sale, and the ability to cross-sell products. Far too many salespeople are comfortable selling one and only one product. They tunnel into the simplest or best known product, and they don’t invest much time or energy in spreading out their experience or their vocabulary.
As a sales manager, you have to help them gain the knowledge and confidence they need to sell your full product line. When I say “confidence,” I mean we should ask without apology for the full price, and not volunteer discounts just because we’re feeling insecure about a product we’ve never sold before.
You may think that each of your people already understands the “how” and has the ability to implement each of the skills in these three zones of the matrix. I’m here to tell you that, in all likelihood, they do not. You really do need to drill them.
You can also apply this “matrix” concept to territory management. Break the entire territory down into logical regions. Sub-divide, building by building, or even by floor if necessary, and focus your team on specific regions.
Sometimes sales managers ask me, “Am I supposed to micro-manage my people?” Let me answer that question by posing another: Are you paying salespeople to drive around for four or five hours a day… or to turn prospects into customers?
If you, like me, give the latter answer, you will want to change the way your team operates. Concentrate on “foot-by-foot” selling until you’ve gotten everything you possibly can out of a certain area … then move on to the next.
Think “bang for your buck.” Think Giuliani. Think U.S. Army. Think strategic. And you’ll win.
Matrix Selling