What to Expect from Salespeople at This Time

The past few months have been filled with ups and downs for salespeople. Although some businesses are seeing sales numbers return “back to normal”, that is not the case for all companies. Sales numbers are usually a good indicator of success, but now that your salespeople most likely aren’t making as many sales, what should you expect from them? Perhaps you’ve furloughed some employees and have brought them back with your stimulus check (even though your usual workload has not returned). So, if they can’t perform their main role of selling, what expectations should you have for your salespeople? Here are some aspects to consider:   

Measure your salespeople’s performance based on other assigned tasks, like administrative work  

While you may have experienced a decline in your usual workload, this doesn’t mean there aren’t things that need to be done. You have a lot on your plate and your salespeople can be valuable assets and help out in other areas of your business! If you haven’t bought into a viable CRM – a tool to help you as a manager understand their activity, and build a list of prospects that will withstand the coming and going of salespeople, while also allowing you to nurture those prospects in a multi-channel marketing approach, now may be a great time to research and execute on that. Do you need help entering information into your CRM or need someone to perform prospect qualification research? Ask a salesperson. When was the last time they identified and fully developed their “Top 50” prospect list? Even if you don’t have a CRM, they can develop this list in Excel and come up with a marketing & sales strategy for the balance of 2020. Even if that just means a “how are you doing” phone call out to those prospects. Your salespeople are not likely making as many sales as usual, but you can measure performance based on their progress with administrative, marketing, and sales tasks. You should expect your salespeople to be accurate, efficient and ready to learn new things.  

The dedication and willingness of your salespeople to work hard during this time is a good indicator of success 

We all know that this is hard time for everyone, but one thing you should expect from your salespeople is their dedication to do their best work. While you should keep your employees’ mental health in mind, you have to keep your own mental health and your business in mind too. You should expect to have salespeople that are dedicated and willing to do hard work, despite the trying circumstances. Make sure your expectations are clear – let your salespeople know what you are looking for! Having salespeople who care about your company’s growth, despite their altered roles, is an indication that you hired the right people for the job.   

Take creativity and flexibility into account – how are your salespeople transforming their roles?  

Since your salespeople may not be able to fully perform their usual roles right now, you should utilize their ability to think outside of the box. In one of our earlier blog posts, about strategy and innovation opportunities to come from the Paycheck Protection Program, we talked about how you can use this time to work on projects that you’ve never had the time for. Have a salesperson that is interested in and skilled at video production? Have them join in on your marketing efforts and create a video for your company! Have your salespeople propose ideas to you about how their roles can be transformed during this time. You should expect your salespeople to have the enthusiasm and flexibility to take on new tasks.  

Your salespeople can also use this opportunity to learn something new! Encourage your salespeople to take online courses to get certifications. They may have never had time for this, so now is the time! According to Medium, “The goal of taking any sales course is to become an even more successful salesperson by learning new selling techniques, how to develop relationships with customers or prospects and most importantly how to close more sales.” As your salespeople take on these new tasks, make sure to remind them that when things return to normal, they will be able to return to what they do best. 

Given the current circumstances, it is difficult to know what you should expect from your employees. Are they stressed? How are they handling life outside of work? First and foremost, it is important to foster an environment where your salespeople feel comfortable sharing how they are feeling. They should also feel comfortable talking to you about their ability to handle the assigned workload. For salespeople, this time may be especially difficult because they, not only need to adapt to working from home, but also have to adapt to performing different tasks than they are used to, while also attempting to close deals. They have also lost commission in this time, so this is on their mind too. Moving forward, consider measuring your salespeople’s performance based on their ability to perform alternate tasks, their dedication and willingness to work hard during this time, and their ability to be flexible and propose creative new ideas for their roles. Even a few months into this pandemic, we are all still trying to navigate our new normal, so do whatever works best for you and your salespeople! As always, MarketReach is here to support you during this time, with expert cold-calling services to help amp up the level of new business sales meeting at-bats that your sales approach may have been missing these past few months.