In sport you hear a lot of players and coaches talk about ‘game plans’ and ‘structure’ – about how they will play at certain times during the game to get a result.

The danger of this is what do you do if your plan has gone out of the window and you are 20 points down at half time?

Hope is Not a Sales Strategy, so it is pointless sticking with the same game plan and hoping that you will get a result.

Sadly, in sales, too many teams are getting halfway through the month and are behind target, but nothing changes.

To make this worse, they then have a ‘next month will be better’ attitude and decrease their efforts instead of looking for ways to make up the shortfall.

5 Proven tactics to use if you are behind target halfway through the month

Introduce a Power Hour

In 2 recent Sales Training workshops KONA turned training into immediate sales and turned around an organisation’s results by introducing a Power Hour.

All attendees were given a list of selected products, prices and quantities; they then developed and practised what they were going to say; then actually picked up the phones during the sales training workshop and called customers and prospects.

Results:

• Over $1,000,000 of products sold in ONE HOUR
• Excess stock cleared and warehouse space created
• Monthly target smashed

Another client used the same tactic a week later and they made 546 appointments in ONE POWER HOUR!!

Commando Raids

My first job after leaving the Army was with L’Oreal, the international Hairdressing Products Supplier, selling hair colours, perms and setting lotions to hairdressers around the North of England. (Just a little cultural shift between the two jobs!!)

Half way through every month my old boss introduced what he called a ‘Commando Raid’ on the territory of one of his 8 salespeople – a tactic where all 8 reps met early one morning and the local salesperson gave each one of us a list of target customers, then out we went and called on them.

At the end of the day we all got together, shared our wins and celebrated that we had helped the local salesperson get back on target.

30 years later this is a tactic that we have introduced to several KONA clients, and it still works today.

Short term Incentives

Monthly and Quarterly sales commissions and bonuses are an integral part of any sales team’s effectiveness and motivation and help drive their Sales Pipeline.

However as well as the Longer Term Incentives (LTIs) many organisations are successfully linking weekly Short Term Incentives (STIs) to specific tasks or products.

For example, this week…

• Open up 5 new accounts
• Sell 30 of Product X
• Generate $20,000 in revenue

The big advantage of this tactic is it is easy to manage, can be monitored daily with a single phone call, and can turn around a month’s results well before it is too late.

Bundle and Package your Products & Solutions

Every time we go into a retailer we see products bundled and packaged together:

• A toothbrush with toothpaste
• A car with 2 years servicing
• A slice of toast with your coffee
• A scarf with a jacket
• A burger and fries and a drink

Often the included product is one the seller has an over stock of, or is looking to introduce to the market as an additional line and source of revenue.

Yet far too many organisations see that tactic as “just for retailers”, which is the wrong attitude and approach.

If you put your mind to it what could you Bundle and Package up in your organisation?

Outbound Customer Service

By definition Customer Service is often seen as a reactive service, typically responding to inbound customer calls or emails.

Yet this doesn’t have to be the case.

There are times in every week where your inbound calls and inquiries are quiet so why not use that time to generate more outbound activity.

In KONA’s Call Centre Training and Customer Service programs we regularly customise a workshop to help inbound teams become more proactive and make outbound calls.

In many cases we include 2 of these 3 previous tactics by combining a Power Hour and Selling Product bundles.

A real life example of this is recently with an organisation selling Power Solutions our Call Centre Specialist Garret Norris helped a client TRIPLE their sales results in only 3 days.

So if you find your salespeople are missing target way too often, what exactly are you doing to change your game plan and the pace of your game before your month turns into just another month of underperformance?

If you would like to discuss how KONA’s Sales Training, Sales Management Training and Call Centre Training will improve your organisation’s results, contact the KONA Group today on 1300 611 288 or info@kona.com.au.

The KONA Group is Australia’s Leading provider of Customised Sales Training and Sales Management Training & Coaching.

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