5 Things every CEO Needs to know
Today CEO’s are in a quagmire. They are finding themselves running their business’s,
making CEO decisions yet having to either manage a sales department or wear the sales
hat themselves. What’s a CEO to do today?
There are 5 things I think are imperative to do if you would like to make it through this
crazy time. Interestingly enough, these things should also be done when things aren’t
so crazy.
1) Scale down your existing sales staff. Decide who are the cream of the crop and
get rid of the rest. How do you decide? By the 3 A’s. The first is Attitude. Do they
have a positive attitude. A belief that if they can’t do it the way they always have
they are willing to look at their sales situations as true opportunities and use every
minute to look at things differently. The second is Activities. Activities are the
actual pro-activities that they do to prospect every day, every week every month.
It could be a combination of cold-calling, networking, cross-selling to existing
clients, strategic alliance meetings etc. Activities are different for everyone but
the ability to commit to whatever they are and stick to it day in and day out is
imperative. The third is approach. The approach is what your sales rep says and
does in front of and on the phone with a prospect. The other two can not really be
taught, this one can.
2) Teach your best people to sell in this environment with a specific process. None
have ever sold in a volatile, fear-filled time like this before. Selling is something
that needs to be taught always but certainly today to attempt to be successful
without it is laced with potential failure. A process to sell doesn’t mean a
memorized script. What it means is an agenda of how they will approach each
prospect, what questions they will ask, what they will do with the answers, how
will they uncover the available budget and what will the next steps look like.
3) Train your existing non-sales staff to be your marketing arm. Sales training can
not only be used to train the sales organization but the non-sales people as well.
Often we have non-salespeople in our organization that have contacts with our
clients and potential prospects on a regular basis. Are they asking for referrals?
Do they know how? The connections that exist with this segment of your
organization are often overlooked and so important to utilize today.
4) Learn to manage a sales team through the 3 “A’s”. As previously discussed, the
three A’s are the basis of success. Additionally it is the easiest and most effective
way to manage your team. Keep an eye and ear out for a positive attitude. If you
see or hear a negative one, which is easily identified through excuse making, it
will become a cancer so cut it out immediately. Use salespeople’s individual
activities to help them track their success through the activities they carry out. A
specific approach, will allow you to have a real post-appointment discussion on
what went right and wrong as opposed to the typical discussion which of ten
includes a conversation like,’ so how did it go?”, “pretty good, pretty good”
which tells you nothing.
5) Build your business on referrals and networking with no cash. Today networking
is the way to build a business. Don’t get me wrong there is obviously a place for
advertising and other strategic marketing but to help get you through some of
these tough times, help secure your brand by being out there in the community.
Networking is again something that should be done also through a process and if
you read my articles regularly, you know that. Additionally we are not getting as
many referrals as we should from existing clients and there are two reasons for
that, 1) we don’t ask, 2) we don’t ask properly. Properly means you must be
specific when asking for referrals. Either a specific person from a particular
organization, a position of a person in a type of business or an alliance of
someone connected in the community that you haven’t met.
As we all work with the skeleton crew that we are left with, let’s work harder and
better to make a success of our business. Getting back to basics, is it ever smart to get
far away from that?
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