Are you asking your salespeople to do too much?

El oh El.

Not being an ass, but what is failed (in your description) to cover is:

The supposed problem doesn't necessarily have a solution.

Outsource your prospecting? Welcome to the proverbial Can of Worms. Training, can they qualify, management, capital risk.

I think salespeople need to focus on:

1) Prospecting, because nobody turns a suspect into a prospect better than a salesperson, and
2) Presenting/Closing, because they are salespeople, ya know.

Everything else should be outsourced, because these skills at high levels are of utmost importance to sales success.

With that said, as a life insurance agent, I use a warm-lead system to generate a consistent flow of leads on a weekly basis.

But, guess what? I still have to call on them, over the phone, and in person, and close them.

I have outsourced the appointment setting aspect with moderate success. But I'm back to me doing it with more consistent success.

I've seen this before...take the prospecting away from the closers, whose precious egos are too fragile to hear "I'm not interested" from suspects.

I happen to disagree. If the salesperson can't do it themselves...if their ego is that fragile...the answer is buried somewhere else. Probably in an unconscious equation they've made. Something like "My mother never wanted me to grow up and be a salesperson...interrupting peoples' days with my cold calls."

The separation of labor theory sounds kind of good, but in practice it lets the salesperson down. Besides, what if the business is small, and the salesperson is the only one there? They must prospect...or the business will die. The sales funnel must be continuously fed. If our intrepid salesperson can't do it, who else will?

Prospecting is a skill like any other, and running away from it will not make it easier.

The job of a manager/owner is to put the right people in the right places. There is room for all kinds of solutions here, but it's a case by case business. I put my strong closers on the front lines and paid them well to be pioneers in opening new customers/markets, but paid 2nd tier sales people less to take over more developed/mature sales areas/customers.

I have found marketing/calling to set sales people up w/ warm leads and then let them run with them works pretty well.

I look at it from a division of labor standpoint. I don't want a 100k+ a year sales person doing a $12-$15/hr job of cold calling/appt setting/data entry in CRM etc... If its a high level sale it is a different story, top closer is in from day 1 handling the account.

I am asking them not to do too much, instead I ask them to be effective and efficient at the same time. We'll if you salesperson has those inefficiences then they're not really are salesperson.

Ideally marketing and sales should be complimentary, but separate.

Marketing should focus on generating leads whilst sales converts them.

The smaller the business is the more blended (all), the roles in the enterprise become.

I agree that your salespeople should be calling (ideally), warm, qualified prospects HOWEVER, they also need to be able to pick up the phone and cold call when the leads run dry.

It's just a matter of being efficient with your time and getting to the hot prospects first.

One strategy I've heard of is to create "sales units" - an inside guy and an outside guy, working as one. As I understood it, the company gave a higher commission rate to the outside guy, and he hired his own inside guy out of this.

Not sure how well it worked as I was only working with the company on a contract.

I think the primary point is spot on. The idea is hundreds of years old - specialization is more efficient than a one man shop. Unfortunately you can't always have different people for different jobs.

My (limited) experience has been that a cold caller with good training working along side an outside sales guy can be VERY effective. The skills are totally separate.

In the real world, however, you can't always have ideal. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do the things you hate (prospecting) so that you can have the opportunity to do the things you love (sales).

In the companies I am working for, I almost always recommend a separate person to do some cold calling. This is because, as the OP states, many sales people LOATHE prospecting (and vice versa). I have found it is harder to find someone who is good at prospecting than it is to find someone who is good at sales.

A warm lead isn't hard to convert. Finding a warm lead in a pile of random people takes a lot more guts.

great thread

The learning process should keep going, seminars, classes, orientation and even tours. This way every salespersons skills and talents will be developed and enhanced.

If you try cold calling and direct mail both together to generate sales leads, you will get good results really. I use this strategy always with targeted marketing list under niche.

The fact is that most people arent more than order takers...if you cant prospect then you are missing a big chunck in your development as a salesperson. If a sales person cant prospect my tendency is to ask them "You want me to bring you a warm blankie and some cookies too?"

Im all about a "T.O." , but the prospectors are the ones doing the real selling work and are more talented and disciplined than the closer. I would use my worse cold callers as closers, and have many times. Usually a person becomes a closer when they arent doing well with cold prospecting (The real work of sales).

I would never take a valuable cold caller off the sales floor and make them a closer. They are more valuable than a closer where they are.

I wont call you a salesperson if you "cant" prospect. I value cold callers more than closers, for many reasons. I have made these determinations after experiencing a thousand different live situations.

It's just my opinion. I believe in TO's but the I give the credit of being a real, hardcore "sales" person to the prospectors, not the closers.

They are just order takers in my book.

Appointment setting is different than a "TO"- It's great to have appointments, and requires some skill to sell... but you are still a wuss in my book if you have to depend on it and cant do your own prospecting.

Probably going to be a head ache not worth hiring. A "Diva"... No thanks, I may give you appointments...but dont come telling me you arent capable of doing your own.

"I dont do windows" is not a good answer...

Personally, I think its optimal to separate the two processes, depending on the business model, but I dont necessarily think of someone as a well developed "salesperson" if prospecting is "too much" for them.

In a call center if someone interviews wanting to immediately be a closer.... My response has been "Great. You are going to be on the cold calling floor for now though, closing is a gravy job... I can take any cold caller on my floor and turn them into a closer, and they have all worked hard enough to earn that. What I value is cold callers. Can you do that?"

-John

Ps. In any event...yeah focus is better... It just struck me hard,your first line; "Most salespeople suck at prospecting".

To me if thats the case, they arent a real salesperson, but I do agree with separating the processes in many cases. Still, a well rounded salesperson should be able (capable of) doing both, if they are worth hiring.

I do think that account management should be an admin thing , if you are doing high volume. Keep the salespeople focused on selling.

I gave two examples Claude...the first example is as you described, where the prospector is actually all but closing the deal....and the second is "appointment setting". Two different arenas. In any event though I feel that prospecting is a huge part of being a well developed salesperson. Just IMO.

I wouldnt want a sales guy though who couldnt set his own appointments on slow days.

Maybe Im old school, but to me "canvassing" is where you learn the fundamentals.

So here's how I've always structured sales.

It works well, it just requires personnel.

First you should have a sales manager. He is in charge of the logistics of it all. Lead generation (for cold calls I mean) setting up and refining software (crm, autodialers, whatever you might have) and general sales team structuring.

Then you have a trainee, appointment setter, fronter. Whatever you wanna call it. He is in charge of cold calling, setting appointments, following up, research for prospects, etc.

Finally, your closer. Ideally, he has two-three fronters under him and/or fronts deals himself as well. He sits on appointments, closes, follows up those meetings, etc.

Now if your team is small, you could have the closer and the sales manager be the same person, have him front his own deals, and maybe have a fronter under him.

Again, this structure doesn't always apply to every sale, but web design, marketing, public relations, they are all consultative sales, and these types of sales lend themselves perfectly to the structure I mentioned above.

Builds confidence, rapport, allows time for sale to pass, a lot of important things are established with this structure in the sale itself, and it keeps your organization running smoothly as well.

This is a subject I am going to talk a lot about soon on my new blog. Sales needs to be applied more efficiently to this business sometimes!

- Mark Cuda
CudaFish - The Online Ramblings Of An Offline Marketer

Agree with Mark...

If you could only afford one sales person, I would have them sit in a desk right beside you and "front" all day TO'ing closes to you. It works alot more efficiently...for many various reasons, and as suggested, after that person had been fronting for thirty days, and listening to me close, I would hire two more people to front, and turn him into the closer.

There are many unspoken reasons, or at least they would take a whole book to explain, but if you hire a one call closer, you may sit for days before he starts closing anything, and his performance for the first few weeks will likely be spiratical at best... but if you hire someone to front, and TO closes to you, you should be making sales from day one.

I agree John.

It's more important to spend time building out how you want to funnel your sales and THEN move on to hiring personnel on a stage after stage basis to fill out that funnel.

Btw. Record all sales calls! And train the heck out of your guys. Don't just hire more, get the most out of the guys you do have. Oh, and reward them.

- Mark Cuda

I think it's about optimizing your operation.

Rewarding talent by facilitating and letting
them do and spend most of their time
doing what they are the best at doing.

Some are better at selling, some better at
being the sales manager, and some better at admin.

An owner of a head hunting firm I knew joked
about how his best salesperson just works
a couple of days a week and spends the rest of
her time golfing and having lunch. Of course
what she was really doing was prospecting,
not suspecting, and relationship building/maintaining.

Dan