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Increase Sales: Fix Broken Windows in How Your Team Sells

 

 

Is your sales team prepared to win and achieve their sales goals  today? Do your salespeople consistently exhibit the discipline to drive profitable sales growth? Do your salespeople clearly understand your expectations and they are accountable to them? One way to ensure your sales team breaks the growing global trend of sales teams not achieving sales growth goals is to fix broken windows in your sales organization. In this post we will discuss where to look for broken windows that are hurting your sales performance.

 

I am very thankful to a number of my mentors over the years. They taught me how to capture and leverage the voice of the customer and how to serve customers by providing industry insights and best practices to improve their bottom line. One mentor taught me how to listen, actively listen for unresolved problems. Mentors help salespeople understand the discipline required to drive profitable sales growth and to be accountable for key behaviors that if performed consistently will drive profitable sales growth. Having disciple and being accountable is not about doing 1,000’s of things perfectly. Being accountable and having discipline is about is having clear goals and expectations on how you will achieve those goals. As the sales leader it is about inspecting what you expect and understanding the behaviors and attitudes to support key goals.

 

I am very proud of my children. My dream for my children was I would grow a business and give it to them one day to run. In running the business they would learn the life lessons I experienced and have financial freedom. I discovered about 15 years ago this was only my dream. My children had much different plans. My daughter became an amazing artist and now is the social media marketing manager for a company driving 3-5 times the traffic to their trade events and website leveraging her artistic skills creating innovative content. My son has a burning desire to serve and protect others and a police officer.

 

Over the holidays my son and I were talking and he shared something called “Broken Window Theory” and I thought it was fascinating. Broken window theory suggests that visible signs of crime like cars stripped and up on blocks in the street, street signs missing, traffic lights not working, people consuming alcohol in public and other anti- social behaviors create an environment for more crime and more serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and others create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes.

 

In the 1969 a psychologist named Philip Zinbardo from Stanford ran an experiment. He parked a car with no license plates in two neighborhoods. One that was run down, broken windows and signs of crime and one in an affluent neighborhood in Palo Alto California. The car parked in the run down neighborhood was vandalized within 10 minutes. Next he smashed the front window and what he observed surprised him. Others in the neighborhood with vandalism and other crimes joined in and within 24 hours the entire car was stripped to the frame. Who did the vandalizing is what was disturbing: It was respectable adults in the community often with their children not …street gangs.

 

The car in Palo Alto remained untouched.

 

The findings from the study?

 

Unintended behavior leads to a breakdown of community controls

 

One broken window leads to many if left unaddressed

 

Disorders drives fear and withdraw from community laws and norms

 

Even the best citizens in a community can start bad behaviors if the behaviors are left unchecked

 

My son has been a police officer in a large city now for a number of years. He has personally experienced how policing and correcting what seems like minor misdemeanor crimes helps bring a neighborhood back to life. He has seen the impact having the discipline to enforce common community norms and expectations that support a safe and prosperous community and how this reduces crime significantly.

 

“Ok Mark, this is all interesting … but how does this apply to driving profitable sales increases year over year?”

 

I thought you would never ask!

 

How many broken windows exist in your company’s sales organization?

 

Do you know where to look?

 

The good news is you have a good smart team and there are many things about your company you and your team should be proud of. When I did business development consulting work I asked a lot of questions and looked for broken windows that are signs of much bigger sales problems to be solved. It is not unusual for my past clients to not even see the broken windows they walk by each day. Many broken windows have been broken for years and they became “ how we do things around here”. New team members will see them immediately but if they want to survive they learn to look the other way. Instead of repairing the broken windows teams try to just cover them up.

 

Let me help you see the broken windows that I have seen because you too may have grown accustomed to seeing them and may walk by them everyday and they are hurting your business development and sales growth efforts…

 

Majority of salesperson’s time spent in non-sales activities

 

“Hi how are you meetings” …Salespeople bringing donuts to their distributors with no other business reason for the visit, no one at the distributor even knew you were coming

 

Not being properly groomed

 

Company car dirty inside and out

 

Not making eye contact with customers in meetings

 

Sales people not taking notes in meetings

 

Salespeople not having a pen visiting a customer job site and having to “remember” the requirements

 

No pre-call plans 

 

No CRM entry for future meetings or past meeting notes

 

Outdated company brochures in sales associate’s vehicles

 

Damaged and stained brochures from not being properly stored used in customer presentations

 

Poor or no customer follow up

 

Not following up on leads provided, QDD disorder

 

Salespeople leaving sales training to make/ take phone calls

 

Customer email not responded to in 24 hours

 

Out-dated sales process

 

Salespeople working on laptops in meetings and not paying attention

 

Missing team weekly meetings

 

Salespeople openly criticizing others on sales team, others on other teams ( not constructive criticism ) 

 

Not responding top your email of voicemail in 48 hours if you asked them to

 

No plan to achieve their sales goals

 

Showing up late to weekly meetings

 

Salespeople playing feature and benefit bingo 

 

Not being prepared for weekly meetings

 

No cadence for how often they visit with each customer

 

Not completing expense reports timely

 

Poor interpersonal exchanges with team members from other business groups

 

Talking too much in meetings with customers

 

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales (product-yes, sales-no) 

 

Not understanding their customers’ businesses

 

Not understanding their market or market language

 

No dollar value in CRM for new opportunities identified

 

Not understanding how your product or service impacts your customers’ bottom line

 

Not qualifying potential customers

 

Salespeople seen as just another rep not a trusted advisor

 

Salespeople not spending the majority of their time in sales behaviors

 

Not updating sales stage in CRM

 

Asking poor questions in meetings

 

Poor listening, talking over customers 

 

Selling on price not value

 

No ideal customer profile so everyone could be a customer 

 

Company vehicle not maintained

 

Poor to no relationships at key customers

 

Key account budgets/goals… but no strategic growth plans on how to achieve them

 

Only knowing the buyers at key accounts no relationship with other influencers 

 

Sales pipeline bucket not a funnel 

 

Poor new product sales 

 

Poor sales customer visit trip planning (more time driving and flying than in front of customers)

 

No formal sales process

 

Salespeople staying at very expensive hotels

 

Salespeople submitting very expensive dinners without customers

 

If you see some of the above you have broken windows that need to be repaired before your team can experience explosive sales growth.

 

The above are some broken windows I have observed but there are plenty more I am sure.

 

How about you…

 

What broken windows have you observed in your sales teams that are negatively impacting your profitable growth plans?

 

Do you have associates in key sales leadership roles that have not been trained to lead salespeople?

 

Are their politically incorrect secrets that your salespeople know but are afraid to discuss?

 

If we allow broken windows in how we sell they hurt our ability to drive profitable sales growth and increase shareholder value. We are not saying everyone has to be perfect and 1,000’s of things. What we are saying is we need discipline and accountability in our sales teams. As the leader you need to set the expectation and insure compliance. If you observe a behavior that is not consistent with what your team has identified as your core values you must be safe to address it and correct it. If not the little broken windows become chaos and good team members in your sales community will start behaving in ways counter to driving profitable growth.

 

In our next post we will discuss common marketing broken windows to look for and repair.

Hand Tattoos and Fixing Broken Windows in Your Marketing

 

 

 

What does your company really know about your customers and targeted new customers? Is your web site an inbound lead generation machine or a virtual brochure just taking up space? How strategic is your marketing and is it creating value or just costs? In this post we will discuss how to identify if you have any broken windows in your marketing.

This week all the news and radio stations are sharing the story about Ariana Grande’s new Kanji tattoo and how it says something totally different than it was supposed to say. Ariana went through the pain and cost of having a tattoo on her palm and wanted it to say “ 7 rings” to promote her new Album. What it did say was “small charcoal grill. When she was informed of this error she immediately went back and had it corrected. Now her Tattoo reads “small charcoal grill finger heart Huh? I have heard people laughing about this mistake and the star herself is making light of it. The trouble is she assumed people would read the tattoo as she does left to right then top to bottom. Here’s the trouble you read Japanese right to left. She shared a picture of her hand as seen below.

 

 

How could she let this happen?

 

How could such a fun message get so screwed up?

 

How could a promotion strategy become such a market joke now?

 

Ariana had a vision and she went to someone she trusted to execute that vision. She had a strategy, she invested money, time and pain to have her vision become a reality. Sound familiar?What if you discovered all the time, pain and cost you put into marketing today is a joke to your target customers?

 

What if I told you your marketing may be sending the wrong message or no message at all to your customers?

 

What if your customers read your promotional material and laugh and ridicule your company instead of want to learn more and want to buy from you?

 

Ouch…that’s not so funny anymore.

 

In my last post we discussed Broken Window theory. If you missed it, this is work completed by psychologist Philip Zinbardo from Stanford  who ran an experiment and it showed if you allow small crimes it will create chaos and even law abiding citizens will commit crime. The longer you allow small crimes the more serious crimes increase. In my last post I shared signs, broken windows you should look for in your sales organization. If they exist they must be repaired or replaced to have a sales team that meets and or exceeds it sales and profit growth targets.

 

Does your marketing efforts have broken windows that need to be repaired?

 

Do you know where to look?

 

Below are some common marketing broken windows you need to look for and repair before your marketing efforts can create the value they were meant to drive.

 

No web site

 

A web site that is a virtual brochure not a strategic lead generation tool

 

Bounce rate greater than 70% 

 

Not knowing what a bounce rate is

 

Not understanding who your ideal customers are and why they are ideal for your business 

 

Not knowing and understanding the language of your customers

 

No buyer personas 

 

Your vision is about marketing activities today not strategies for future

 

Not knowing what a buyer persona is 

 

Salespeople are selling naked: do not know what sales tools you have or where to find them 

 

Salespeople are not using new sales tools because they so not work

 

Salespeople creating their own sales tools

 

You do not understand the current voice of your customers’ 

 

Do not understand the problems you solve for your targeted customer

 

Do not have clear-targeted markets

 

If you search for problems you solve on Google and your company is not found on first page (ideally in the top three)

 

You are in B2B space and marketing believes “content marketing” is only for B2C

 

No content strategy

 

No thought leadership published in your markets and industries

 

No content map

 

Not speaking at industry trade events

 

Do not understand how buyers buy today

 

No WebEx strategy to demonstrate your team’s knowledge

 

Do not understand what buyers need to buy today

 

Do not understand the buyer journeys of your buyers today

 

No blog

 

All your marketing talks more about you than the problems you solve

 

No LinkedIn presence or strategy

 

Someone on marketing team says: “Our buyers do not shop for products like ours on the internet”

 

No Facebook presence or strategy

 

No Twitter presence or strategy

 

Not leveraging pintrest and instagram

 

Your team cannot all agree on your target audience

 

You do not have enough team members to execute effective marketing

 

No You-Tube content

 

If you publish content you share same content in every social platform

 

Your content is selling not educating

 

Your content is gobbledygook (check out his link gobbledygook manifesto

 

Does your team have any of the above broken windows that need repaired?

 

Is your web traffic growing each month?

 

Are your inbound leads growing each month?

 

Have you strategically created a community…your tribe

 

Are your inbound leads converting into sales and profits?

 

What is the sale close rate on inbound leads?

 

Or does your marketing say “small charcoal grill finger heart” and you don’t even know?

 

Running a market leading business is very difficult. It starts with being customer centric and intimately listening and understanding your customer’s voice.

Marketing teams that add tremendous value know how to leverage the voice of their ideal customers and they strategically speak the language of their customers correctly. You must clearly understand your customers’ problems, solve them and capture the success stories and share them in strong content.

If you have any of the broken windows above in your marketing please repair them. The longer they are allowed to exist the more time your competitors are winning business you could have won.

As for Ariana Grande? TMZ just reported she now has a $1.5 million opportunity to remove the tattoo LazerAway.

Talk about jumping on an urgent problem and being able to solve it brilliantly and have all her fans and media share the problems you solve to a key target demographic ! Excellent Strategy!

In our next post we will discuss broken windows in leadership you need to repair.

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