Stop Focusing On Sales, If You Want To Build A Better Business

The majority of businesses focus on sales revenue when they want to grow.  Whilst I understand why this is the case, I’m here to tell you that it’s the wrong way to grow sales.

Sales are an output or an outcome, and these are things that businesses do not have control over. No amount of sales coaching can make you predict your customer’s response. You and your sales team can’t control sales.  Instead, what you can control is how you influence, persuade, and negotiate.  You can also control your enthusiasm, optimism, and ability to uncover customer’s needs. Unfortunately, you simply can’t control whether the customer says “yes” or “no”.

Given you can’t control sales, isn’t it time you started focusing on the activities that you can actually control? 

I call the activities that you can control, ‘sales drivers’. These are the activities that directly contribute to the sales number or drive sales.  Meetings attended, phone calls made, emails sent, proposals/quotes submitted, presentations delivered, are all examples of sales drivers.

To increase your sales, start focusing on your sales drivers. Firstly, decide all the relevant sales drivers for your business. I listed a few earlier, but these could be further refined. You could change phone calls to new customer calls and existing customer calls. Meetings attended could become customer meetings and network meetings. I’m sure there’s plenty other sales drivers that you can think of.   

Set targets for these sales drivers.  Aim to set realistic targets, however, remember these targets aren’t locked in stone and can be changed at a later date.  Also gather input from your sales team, as this will help with their adoption of this new process. With this being said, the majority of salespeople like to set a low target and over-achieve, therefore take some of their suggested targets with a grain of salt.  

There are plenty of tools available to measure your sales drivers, ranging from a whiteboard or a spreadsheet, through to expensive cloud-based Customer Relationship Managers (CRM) and sales measurement platforms. Whilst you get what you measure, your sales success will be determined more by the accuracy of the data inputted, as opposed to the tool this data is inputted into.  With this being the case, there are benefits from using a more sophisticated platform, such as powerful data analytics.

Sales drivers decided, targets set, measurement tool ready, now it’s implementation time, which means clarity, proficiency, and environment.

Clarity refers to individual and team expectations relating to the sales drivers, why this sales approach is important, the systems and processes to support.  The majority of businesses fail at this point due to poor communication.

Effective communication underpins the success of the sales driver approach. Leaders need to clearly articulate the vision, stay consistent with the message, and have an appropriate feedback mechanism.  Communication is two-way, therefore salespeople need to speak up if something doesn’t make sense.    

Proficiency is the ability of the salesperson to carry out the sales driving initiatives. This area focuses on training and coaching.  It’s one thing to instruct your team to do something, but it’s another to ensure they possess the skills for sales success.  The responsibility of proficiency rests with the business leaders and the sales coaching they provide.

Lastly, environment refers to the workplace culture. Consider the environment you want and be intentional in creating this. Environment has the power to make or break businesses. You can have a comprehensive sales driver approach, provide clear communication, train and coach your staff to increase sales proficiency, only to have it unravel because your business lacks soul. The best businesses possess an environment that is collaborative, supportive, and operates with integrity.     

As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when implementing a sales drivers’ approach, but ultimately it’s about controlling what you and your sales team can control. Stop only focusing on the top-line sales number, and start placing your attention on the methods to drive sales.