Puzzle

Company President: "After your help resolving our current telephone prospecting issues with HPS not working as expected, I'm confident we'll start hitting our targeted numbers. But I'm concerned that we're all too close to the subject to be truly creative with all the new stuff you suggest we do.

"I'm sure some of my team will be successful, but I don't have someone on board who is totally focused on creating new things, experienced enough to pull it off and dedicated to making all team members successful.

"Ordinarily, this would be the job a my national sales manager, but that position is not currently filled and probably won't be for several months."

Diagnosis

Since this was a second engagement with this client, the diagnosis and puzzle were arrived at through a collaborative brainstorming session between us and our client.

Bottom line: He needed a creative person in the trenches, shoulder to shoulder with his salespeople.

Solution

The only way to truly figure out ways to sell the client's products and services using a variety of means was to have the Honest Selling consultant actually become a sales rep for our client's the company – which we did, for three months.

During the engagement, we:

• Crafted and perfected prospecting offers that were completely understood by all prospects. (The dial-to-appointment ratios were still less than desired, but that is due to the fact that the client has no way to segment the prospect list to people who financially qualify for what it sells. Until someone says "Yes" to the offer, the sales rep can't tell whether the call should have ever been placed.)
  
• Created and implemented a cold-letter campaign – four successive letters each sent two weeks apart.  
• Established guidelines for getting new salespeople up to speed quickly on the HPS prospecting and cold-letter campaign.
  
• Established guidelines for creating and leveraging lead-sharing groups with other industry reps.  
• Got an article we ghost-wrote published in an industry trade magazine – generating exposure for an area sales rep.  
• Got everyone on the client's sales team to begin taking more risks – experimenting with different product concepts, ideas for marketing penetration, etc.

Results

Cold-calling offer-to-appointment ratios went from one appointment for every 102 offers to one appointment for every 59 offers with no decrease in the appointment-to-close ratio.

For the first time in a year, some salespeople started to hiting or exceed quotas.

Salespeople began taking full responsibility for their successes and failures. Those who would never have been successful at this company have either chosen to leave or been fired, and those who are not motivated in the salary-commission environment have switched to a commission-only relationship.

Much of the lingering confusion between salespeople and sales management has been eliminated.

This client still has a long way to go, but the prospects for long-term success look great.