Sometimes a conversation or an article from an author catches your eye. As we were reading some articles from Dr. Jeffrey Magee we thought it would be interesting to share an article from Dr. Magee to our Industrial Supply Trends readers on his sales perspectives.
Dr. Magee is well known speaker and author of more than 30+ books and has been involved in the distribution channel with industry and trade associations like NEMRA and NAED for the past two-decades.
Dr. Magee was kind enough to share some leadership thoughts for our IST readers below,
Whether it is by product line or customer type, the post COVID world of massive re-alignments, mergers, consolidations, staffing changes, buyer retirements and product line changes has settled into the new cadence for the foreseeable future in our industry. So, how do you keep yourself and your sales team focused and not become distracted by a game of Wack-A-Mole and a race to the bottom?
Over the decades working in the sales and leadership space, from my own selling years, learning and leading of talent, to working with clients across the globe, I have learned that there truly is only one quantifiable methodology to keeping yourself and your staff focused on the issues, activities and actions that drive profitability and growth – but it takes discipline, execution, resiliency and accountability to achieve this on a consistent basis!
I have studied this, written on this, coached on this, advised business leaders/owners on this and addressed this in our client LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE work; it is not a simple one-and-done approach.
Here are several methodologies being used by the consistent champions in our market …
- It starts by applying the WPxF=ROI™ formula that one day while working with a client it revealed itself and has never failed me nor any client since. I detail this in our LEADERSHIP & SALES INSTITUTE® programs and in my SALES MASTERY: Performance Driven Selling™ textbook.
The simple of it is, start by identifying all of the activities or actions that your best sales representative lives by and archive them into a check-list if you will. Then as a sales leader or business owner ask, what is missing from your lens that if we all were doing this, the aggregate, we would be on-track, given any market disruption or interruption (I call these your DIPs™ from my recent book CHANGEFORMATIONAL™). This list you are creating becomes the Work Products (WP). I have detailed this for many industries and it serves as a performance check list; do this you excel. And it serves as a powerful diagnostic coaching tool when someone is under-performing, guaranteed they have established their own WPs and actions that are actually working against them and thus the organization.
Once you have this master list of WPs now you add the multiplier to each, the Frequency (F), in respect to how often and how much of each WP is to be accomplished and when. You are creating a better-practice blueprint for everyone to follow and this serves to keep everyone focused when an issue or task pops up that is not on the list, then why are we being diverted?
This WPxF=ROI model can be applied to every role in an organization; I have merely detailed examples for the selling team here.
- Identify what the Core Issues or Initiatives are that drive the profitability Value Streams you have established as a Business (Manufacturer, Distributor, Agency, Sales Professional), and, make those widely promoted within your firm. As appropriate promote or reference this throughout your pricing matrix, brand promotions on a regular basis, a key element of your Brand Demand Generation activities, your literature (inside and outside the house as they say), attached to everyone’s Job Expectations and celebrate every WIN – people need constructive positive reinforcement.
- Identify what those Core Activities (WPxF=ROI) are that will drive Profitability and bake that into every role within your organization, so everyone has skin-in-the-game and sees how there every effort matters.
- This must be a core line item in every meeting, that re-loops our every effort back to your Core and its influence and impact on Profitability. Many times, this is overlooked until you are either way behind or way ahead, this must be sequentially built into meetings and your hard-core monthly business development recaps; Especially important for all of your Inside Sales and Outside Sales professionals to be mindful of …
- Build Profitability into everyone’s actual daily-weekly-monthly-quarterly and annual Performance Reviews. Set the expectations of each player so they know what their contributing goal-post is and then identify the quantifiable KPIs so they and everyone else can measure objectively on any day where we are? Have supervisory monthly check-ins with each direct report on their annual goals and contributions, as well as over-all success development of each member; what gets measured gets addressed.
- As an example, with your revenue generating sales machine and team … Ensure your CRM or Sales Data Base is actually tracking the data you need and have it appear 24/7 on a transparent dashboard for all to see.
- Innovation lab time with everyone in your organization. It amazes me how often incredible observations are made from the frontline in respect to what is derailing them/us away from profitability and growth, when safely asked. Likewise, phenomenal ideas bubble-up when asked for ways to be more profitable and accelerate growth. In our LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE, I am reminded of a discussion at a plant with 30 emerging leaders, how we started generating powerful KPIs and WPs for business growth, a massive wake-up call embraced by the senior leaders; unleash the power of your human capital!
- I teach a self-management time-management tool I call the Quadrant Manager System™, in that you tale a piece of paper and make a large plus sign on that paper, then label each of the four quadrants with, everything we do comes down to a DO, SEE, Call or WRITE endeavors in business. Fixate on the top three most powerful contributors to profitability and growth every day within each of these four categories among your To-Do-List and you will achieve greatness.
- Create both a VENT by-which the people on your team can actually communicate and share when they feel out of alignment, without fear of retribution. And create an INCENTIVE approach that allows everyone to step-up, step-in and achieve greatness and have a piece of the pie; professionally speaking professionals are incentivized in one of three core areas (Monetary, Rewards/Recognition and Intrinsic drivers) – abundance mentality always wins in the end!
- One of the ingredients that will keep you and your team aligned to achieve profitability will be your VALUES. Make sure you live them in your every action, from hiring to every interaction to even terminating-with-grace. This will also be a GPS in making decisions, interacting with clients and focusing on what you do – if your Value Streams and WPxF=ROI KPIs are all in alignment … WOW!
- Create a Team Engagement group made up of a cross section of employees from all levels and work areas to meet regularly to serve as a cohort in keeping the organization aligned, representing ideas from within and being an advocate to the senior leaders of areas of question and concern that could impact the issues the organization addresses and how that will impact or influence profitability.
Keeping Your Staff Focused on the Core Issues to Drive Profitable Growth is a never-ending endeavor and the more you can institutionalize the WPxF=ROIs the greater your consistency will be to fixate on issues that matter and not be distracted by issues that do not matter.
Key Takeaways
I found it interesting to read this column and step back and think about sales from more of an academic mindset. Dr. Magees WPxF=ROI formula of defining your effective Work Products (activities that drive sales and reach your goals) and do them more frequently to maximize your sales effectiveness was interesting to review. It’s more than the basic make more sales calls = more sales and profit mindset that is so easy of a mindset to fall into.
Sales Training is often overlooked or not done, because it is just assumed that your sales team has the experience to figure it out themselves. Are you as a channel leader investing in your sales team with different ways of challenging them to improve, providing them ideas and training, sales tools, and the right right KPIs and Incentives to actually have a sales effort that delivers the best ROI?
As always, we appreciate your comments and feedback. Jgunderson@channelmkt.com
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