High Performance Sales Management - Managing by Numbers.
In our recent visits to various clients’ dealerships, our focus is as always, on sales management performance and accountability utilising the Managing by Numbers sales managers support processes.
Working in a dealership last week, an experience crystalised our thinking on this topic and we want to share our thoughts with you.
In all high performing dealership, the DP sets sales targets and income targets for all departments each month.
In sales departments, the targets involve the following:
- Sales targets per month
- Average income targets pvs
- F&I penetration and income targets
- Car care income targets PVS
- Extended Warranty Penetration targets
Clearly each departmental manager operates a DOC so that they know exactly where they are operating compared to sales and income targets at any time of the working month.
Also, most of the great sales managers then break down the targets into weekly targets.
All of the high performing sales managers carry out weekly performance assessments (52 critical analysis points very 12) to ensure that their sales team members achieve their individual targets as the departments collective performance relies on each sales consultant and Business Manager and Car Care consultant achieving their individual sales and income targets.
Our observation is that most sales managers don't view their sales team members as resources that are paid and empowered to achieve or exceed specific results and maximise their income.
What concerns us more is that when those resources fail to achieve the agreed targets, those people are allowed to continue to produce poor results, well below the agreed performance levels, for extended periods of time.
Every business is in fact a workplace and certain workplace rules apply.
If sales managers are doing weekly and EOM performance assessments, then a trend appears in the performance of all sales consultants.
If the trend is poor and not corrected with weekly counseling and training applied as required, then the sales manager will fail resulting in the dealership failing to achieve maximum ROI and profitability and manufacturer sales and CS targets.
Why is a High Performance Sales Training programme critical? Well... there are a few reasons:
- People learn differently, so an out of the box approach is ineffective.
- You need to expedite the learning curve of your sales consultants.
A customised sales training program will do both of these.
The importance of a customised approach is paramount to the effectiveness of your organisation.
Brian Phillis customises training programs for each individual client.
Timing: A one and done approach is antiquated.
Use a drip methodology to serve up skills content to your sales teams, as they are all at different skills levels.
There are tools that we have developed that allow us to increase skills quickly, then test and drip content. There are still ways to get sales training content into sales’ hands.
Brian makes sure you have a consistent cadence.
Brian’s take away is, a one and done approach doesn’t work.
Tailor the testing to the initiative and group. New hires should be tested more frequently than tenured sales consultants. Continue to educate incrementally.
Be Agile: Agility is key.
It’s incumbent upon us to share with you and the sales management team how to identify gaps in the sales consultants skills and abilities.
We need to then customise content to fills those gaps. Identify the modalities that best resonate and drive adoption and roll them out.
This is the true determinant of a successful sales training program. Using Managing by Numbers dealers and having the ability to see gaps in learning in "real time." Close the gaps in real time and achieve a higher performance.
All of these dimensions are customisable.
