I love consistency in selling. And consistency in management, policies and procedures. While consistency has it's place in the running of a successful sales organization, there are times where consistency leads to drudgery.
Salespeople in retail do the same thing everyday, opening the cash drawer and maintaining this display and entering information there. Those who sell in customers' homes drive to appointments every day and do their thing, and then drive to the next appointment. Door-to-door canvassers are out in the streets of the community drumming up prospects or closing sales. Prospectors are on the phone day in and day out.
"That's their job," you might tell me.
Of course, we all have to do our jobs to make the organization work, but there is a time to shake things up to end sales drudgery: that automatic pilot selling during periods of lowered enthusiasm that usually drive sales numbers down, and with it the spirit of salespeople in the company. Sales drudgery is sameness, it's boredom, it's low engagement of employees.
Here are ten ways to end sales drudgery in your sales team, if not forever, for a while:
1. Hire a sales trainer or author to speak to your group.
When I work with sales teams, I know that not all of the information I present is new. Some of it has been spoken before, by the sales teams' sales manager, and probably has been spoken repeatedly. But having a fresh face and voice present sales information can spark a sales team out of their drudgery stupor.
2. Have a contest.
Contests are so commonplace in some sales organizations that they actually promote sales drudgery. But maybe a new kind of contest is in order. Instead of awarding a something-or-other to the top seller for month, offer an incentive to anybody who increases their closing rate by five points during the month. Do something different. Different is good when your mission is to combat sales drudgery.
3. Meet off-site.
If you have a weekly sales meeting and it's always in your office, schedule a meeting off-site: in the conference room of a friend's company, at a vendor's facility, at a restaurant, at a food shelter, in a hotel next to your competitor's location, in a party bus or a limo, in a public park shelter, or at your home. Same-old same-old sales meetings promote sales drudgery.
4. Require a 12 hour day.
Traffic is up in your store? Sales are going gangbusters? Have your team put in a 12 hour day to meet the demands of the business. But make it fun. Go out for a beverage afterward as a group. Take pictures throughout the day and post them in the breakroom. Give them a $12 bonus for working a 12 hour day.
5. Have a pot-lock.
Invite your sales team to bring in food for lunch to share with each other, if this is not part of your normal operations. If it is part of your normal operations, then stop having pot-luck on the second Wednesday of the month (or whenever you traditionally do it) and order pizza instead. Better yet, order something different and uncommon: Have a restaurant deliver pancakes and bacon, or fish and chips, or have dim sum, complete with wait-staff. Remember, different is good.
6 . Have a sales employee present all or part of a sales meeting.
Agree on a topic with the employee and schedule it ahead of time. Promote the event ahead of time. Sales managers aren't the only ones with good ideas about selling.
7. Team sell for one week.
Assigning a high-performer to a low-performer is a no-brainer. But pairing up two high-performers can work wonders for fighting drudgery. Let the top-performers compare notes, learn from each other, and bond. Even pairing low sales performers can be great: there are often great things low-performers do that can be taught to other low-performers, thereby raising the quality of your team's work.
8. Do something silly.
As a silly person myself, I am fond of doing silly things to fight drudgery. Wear Hawaiian shirts for a week (especially effective in my home state of Minnesota in February). Require a change of clothes during the day. Call in after every sales appointment, but require the employee to start their report with a joke (just give him time to research jokes beforehand).
9. Give responsibility for employee's B's sales performance for the month to employee A.
Give a bonus to employee A if she can get employee's B's sales to increase by 5% or more by month-end. Do the same with employees B & C, D & D, etc.
10. Library time.
My daughter has library time in third grade. Have library time for your sales team. Bring in a stack of sales books and set them on the table in front of your sales team. Have each member select a book, and assign them to go to a personal space in the facility and read in an hour, then have them return to the group and have them share what they learned with the entire group.
These are merely ten sales-drudger-fighting ideas, but there are hundreds of things a sales manager could do to combat sales drudgery. What wacky, different, or brilliant ideas do you have that might help end sales drudgery in a sales team? Please share your thoughts with our readers.
If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training.
He works with companies that sell to consumers in
all B2C sectors to increase sales by realizing the buying potential of every prospect.
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