I have now sat in a room with too many small event company owners and CEO’s who are somewhere between intensely and mildly frustrated by the performance of their sales teams, to not share some ways towards sustainable improved results and mental health

You may identify with this if you’re nodding at any of these scenarios:

• Your Sales Manager(s) doesn’t seem to tire of giving you inflated expectations and forecasts that never come to pass
• You know your team could be doing better but you can’t put your finger on exactly how
• You invest in expensive hiring, training and support but you don’t see light at the end of this “investment” tunnel

My intention with this blog is to replace the frustration with 6 positive actions that enable growth. I believe by starting with the right questions and a mindset of building enduring value into your business, the blockages to a step change in revenues can quickly be released. Here they are:

1. Leadership, leadership, leadership

Do you have the right person leading the team? If it’s you, do you know how to or do you need to own up to requiring some support and coaching of your own?

If it’s a Sales Manager, do they have the attributes you need? Resilience, creativity, focus, desire to do/be better, integrity, empathy. In addition, do they have the technical skills and support to effectively drive sales growth?

It may be worth doing an assessment of these attributes and skills and being willing to accept the outcome that may be the unsettling prospect of making a change or the investment of providing greater support (if the attributes are right but not the skills). Some leaders are significantly more effective in one stage of team development than another and so changes may be required

2. Invest in Sales training and support

Are you willing to invest your own time in making a base for future sustainable growth or are you really just applying quick fixes (which have 2 possible outcomes – nothing changes or you keep paying expensive external support to make progress)?? Do you have a clear plan to transfer knowledge and understanding to both SD and MD or are you building in a dependency? Are you / your MD building the knowledge to be able to develop and challenge your Sales Management? 

I have a friend who now runs a major UK based retail operation.
His company invested 2 years in his learning and understanding sourcing and the supply chain before giving him the role of leading the business. Are you investing in yourself / your MD developing this granular level of understanding of your own business functions in order to enable accelerated growth?

Do not disregard that in this day and age, one knowledge GAP in sales teams is the use of technology. Do you use salesforce.com to the best of its capabilities? Do your sales teams know what can be achieved with the system? (You and they will be surprised when they do). This will lead to our next point.

3. Gain visibility and add value through your current KPIs and pipeline system

Is it worth revisiting your sales KPIs and reconfirming they align with the outcomes you want? Are you clear enough with your understanding of your pipeline system that you could sit with a Sales Manager and quickly identify the fracture points for yourself should you feel the need?

4. Obtain clarity on Account and new business growth

Do you have clarity on where you believe the growth opportunity sits? When did you last view the data on how you are performing in these 2 headline categories? If you start here then you are able to drive the direction for growth and ensure time and incentivisation is allocated accordingly. You may have accounts who are keen and able to spend more but no one is effectively encouraging them to do this. You may also have a high number of new entrants, or non customers, who would spend if sold to and who may also add to the value of the event experience for others by their presence

5. Assess your current skillset

Do you have a useful way of getting a view of the relative skillsets of your sales people? In many cases, comparing revenue numbers is apples versus guava fruit due to the variance in product maturity, account base, territory etc. so how do you currently form a view of “who’s my best new business sales person, who is best for account growth, client retention, best selling to complex organisations, best in financial services??”

6. Exterminate internal silos and encourage better integration with Production and Marketing

It is important to assess how effective the link is with the Product team. Understand if the briefings are impactful and the research useful and well communicated

In most organisations the Production team would have already done significant "pre-qualification" of hot leads but can this be done more effectively?

Marketing departments are currently going through a major shift, and are now deploying inbound marketing and content marketing to drive leads and engagement. Therefore marketing and sales departments now have to work together as the responsibility to prequalify these leads will rest on the Marketing team's shoulders. 

The suggestion here is to generate more movement across the silos and transfer or give assignments to Production people in the sales function or Sales people in Marketing etc. If these are your future leaders and top performers the time will be well invested

Turn frustration into revenue

If you believe that your Sales team could be driving greater growth then these are a few suggestions of where to re-start your journey. Any recent success examples would be great to see as would any alternative places to start?

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This is a guest blog by Tim Mann. Tim has been operating within the Conference / Events industry for the best part of 20 years. Having started in Sales, Tim has led businesses engaged in many different delivery models – topical conferences, large scale annual conference / confexs, training, Summits, digital platforms. Tim has worked for 3 significant industry players where he has led new business launches, turnarounds and fast growth operations. He has had the opportunity to trial and learn from many different approaches within both a Sales and a business context. He has also had the opportunity to work with some outstanding people, many of whom continue to make valuable contributions to the industry.
Connect with Tim on LinkedIn or drop him an email.

Image credit: Kevin Dooley