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What does your sales team really need to learn?

Apr 29, 2019 By Stuart Ayling

sales-training-brisbane-sydney

Does your sales team need to improve their results?

In many cases the answer is Yes! But do you know which part of their sales efforts actually needs attention in order to achieve better outcomes?

It’s not always any easy question to answer.

Ask your sales team

Ask your sales team what needs to be improved to help them make more sales and the answer is often:

  • “we need to be cheaper”
  • “better information/support” or
  • “more marketing so people know who we are”

Ask your sales manager

Ask a sales manager or business owner what needs to be improved and often the answer is:

  • “make more calls”
  • “close more sales” or
  • “better articulate our value proposition”

In many cases I’ve seen the situation where the sales manager (or whoever holds the role of managing the ‘sales team’) doesn’t ever get out into the field with their individual sellers. So they don’t have first-hand experience of what their team are actually doing. And they don’t build rapport with individuals and never get a deeper understanding of what drives each of their team members.

Or I’ve seen sales leaders who initially request ‘sales training’ when really what they’re thinking about is improving the ‘presentation skills’ of the team because giving a presentation is an important component of the sales process.

Skill, process or attitude

When it comes to identifying what needs to be improved it can be helpful to have a framework that covers a wide variety of options. The you can decide which specific areas of skill, process or attitude need to be improved.

The Sales Performance Improvement Framework (SPIF) was developed to help sales leaders (and business owners) better define what the problem is, and therefore where the focus for improvement should be.

Observed vs. Recorded

It must be recognised that many traits of sellers, or specific sales-related activities, can only be observed in the field. They are not recorded so you can’t monitor them ‘after the fact’. That’s why the quadrant structure for the SPIF includes ‘Observed’ versus ‘Recorded’.

Those factors that are recorded have been documented in some format, so they are more easily measured. The factors which are observed usually occur in one-to-one settings during client interactions. So, if you’re not observing that particular sales interaction you wont to able to determine if a particular factor is being done/applied.

Office vs. field

The other axis of the SPIF addresses whether the factor occurs ‘in the office’ or ‘in the field’. When combined with the concept of observed vs. recorded this gives a clear picture of where the sales manager needs to be looking to determine which factors across the whole sales performance spectrum offer room for improvement.

For help to apply the SPIF to your organisation, or to explore sales performance improvement and training options, you’re welcome to get in touch.

Find out more

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Filed Under: Learning & development, Sales management, Sales training

About Stuart Ayling

Stuart Ayling is Chief Sales Strategist at Marketing Nous. With many years of sales and marketing experience under his belt he's on a crusade to help expertise-based businesses develop their sales capabilities and achieve their goals. Subscribe to his blog to get the latest resources.

Subscribe to the blog for the latest resources, and get a copy of ‘7 Steps to Create a High Performance Sales Team’

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Overview of client feedback

The week following the 2-day training, the team had already commenced implementing some of the learnings from Stuart’s training.
Camille Johnson, CEO

Sales figures have increased by 20% on last year to date!! The team also continue to pick up new customers.
Sharyn Moran, General Manager

Our sales results have increased since incorporating Stuart’s sessions into our sales conference and this has been during a downturn in the market.
Justin Zakaras, National Sales and Marketing Manager

The content of the sessions was customised to suit our customer interactions, with a lot of preparation on the part of Stuart.
Dr. Sunil Kadri, Head of Sales and Business Development


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Thank you so much for a brilliant session on Thursday. I think the format and content was ideal.
Rennie Colston, Sales Director

We had a very positive result from involving Stuart in our Managers Conference last year.
Russell Varley, Human Resources

The training got us thinking more strategically about how the business is structured. It has really built our capabilities as a management team.
Mia Graham, General Manager


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Stuart was patient, flexible and knowledgeable. He took the time to truly understand our business.
Helen Zwicker, Executive Officer

The best thing is that I now have a road map of specific marketing activities that can be implemented with confidence.
Donna Cazzolato, General Manager Sales and Marketing

The participants immediately felt engaged as Stuart demonstrated his understanding of our needs and challenges.
Frederic Vanhove, Principal Engineer, Pacific Delivery


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With only one day we had a lot of material to cover and Stuart created a positive learning environment for all involved.
Kylie Kinsella, Sales Manager Australia & NZ

Bad ideas are expensive in business however with Stuart Ayling, it was money very well spent.
John B. Lonergan, Sales Manager


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By the next week, sales of this product had doubled from 10% of all new sales to 20%. The extremely cost effective session with Stuart paid for itself within the first week.
Maria Triggs, General Manager

We have already seen a new client on board as a result of the two-day workshop.
Mark Mahoney, Managing Director


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Stuart put the sales training across in a way they could accept as a part of our service offering with out them feeling like “salesmen”.
Gary McDonald, Managing Director

We were impressed by the approach of Stuart and the simplicity of the program without the hype generally associated with these courses.
Dirk Kuiper, General Manager


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About Marketing Nous

Marketing Nous was established in 2000 by Stuart Ayling, Director and Chief Sales Strategist. Stuart works  with expertise-based businesses to develop customised sales training and … Read More >>

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