Tips for Top Performers
You can hire top-performing salesmen and women with the most impressive track records of sales success in their prior jobs. But do you ever wonder why they’re looking for new employers in the first place? Often it is because, despite their demonstrable abilities to “make it rain”, they must have been in some way unhappy with the way they were managed or supported in the roles they left behind. What can a smart supplier or distributor do to attract and retain a top-notch sales force?
A good salesperson is like a bulldog – doggedly determined, unwavering and single-minded of purpose. So, throw your bulldogs a bone. Give them the ball and let them run (and other cliches). In this case, the metaphorical ball is a top-performing beverage sales technology solution. A solution like GreatVines not only drives more and better sales to boost the supplier’s bottom line, but it empowers and enables a top performer with all the tools, data and strategies needed to achieve sales success at levels they already seek to approach. In short, don’t give them coercive incentives and targets – give them what they need to surpass your expectations.
Our colleague Ben Salisbury of Salisbury Creative Group understands this dynamic well. A veteran of the beverage sales trenches, he advises his clients to discard sales incentives as a strategy for driving growth. In an article Ben published recently, he distills this idea perfectly remarking:
“The very best sales people will walk through walls to please their customers (and they do it of their own accord). They will work long hours to keep their promises. And, yes, they expect to be rewarded for their efforts. The primary job of a sales leader, therefore, is to find and keep these people – not to create clever ways to motivate them.”
Salisbury’s top two recommendations for “finding and keeping these people” include: furnishing sales teams with the tools and resources needed to do their job well, and making it easier for salespeople to keep promises to their customers. And let’s not forget, save them time! Those two recommendations are at the nexus of what the GreatVines is designed to accomplish.
GreatVines enables sales to operate at the highest levels of efficiency by eliminating manual, spreadsheet (or even paper-based) processes, and instead, keeping all sales data, trade marketing and brand building activity and results logged in the cloud. This alone is a quantum leap in ease of use for a sales pro, delivering exceptional visibility and cloud accessibility to sales data and operational metrics. And it goes well beyond simply this.
Sales execution tools equip sales teams with strategic planning capabilities. Sales users are energized by the ability to easily plan, execute & measure activities, account objective management with visibility into ROI and completion percentages, and even turn notoriously annoying surveying/auditing exercises into value added workflow helping salespeople sell more and better while delivering the data and market intelligence corporate and marketing are looking for. They’re also supported by trade promotion management automation which enables them to accurately plan, budget, execute and audit all promotional spend and – most importantly – tie results back to relevant metrics. TPM tools from GreatVines allow sales pros the power to act quickly and autonomously on an opportunity without having to jump through hurdles with management and finance to get access to funds. Field sales users can set spend allocations according to previously approved budget plans ensuring accurate, consistent execution and quick speed to market.
