Increase Your 2020 Sales with these Sales Productivity Tools
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Increase Your 2020 Sales with these Sales Productivity Tools By Tony Cole, Co-Founder and CLO I recently started working with the Moeller High School football team and am inspired to share some of my experiences. Coaching football and coaching sales have many commonalities and my recent season with Moeller helped me identify 9 Football Related Sales Productivity Tools that, when used by managers and salespeople, will create more productive and effective sales results. From 1963 to 1984, I either played football or coached football. It was in my blood, it defined me and it was all that I thought about. My language and thoughts were always tied to the game, the sport, and the competitive nature of football. I often think and talk like a football player/coach even now in my role as a sales coach! • “You’re out of bounds.” • “That’s a Hail Mary!” • “You must have played without a helmet” • “That’s a long shot” • “What do we have to do to win?” Understanding the game and all that goes into coordinating a successful football team requires consistent study, planning and practice. Like a high-performing sales team, a winning football team requires that each player and coach possess a high level of desire and commitment to: 1. Teammates, 2. Skill Development, 3. Disciplined Practice, and 4. Courage, Motivation and Respect for one another. Working with the team and other coaches at Moeller, I discovered the parallels between the two challenging “sports” of sales and football. The sales productivity tools described below are inspired by practices and systems that improve players and performance. Selling is a competition and, as in football, the right team, perfect practice and planning wins the game and the sale. ©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 1
9 Sales Productivity Tools
1. Practice Schedule – All professionals need practice. Every team must have a schedule
for practice. Within this schedule, the game is broken down into units where each specific
aspect of the game is practiced: offensive line, defensive line, running backs,
linebackers, special teams, two-minute drill, punt return.
Set a practice schedule for your salespeople to practice sales skills: asking for
introductions, qualifying a prospect, the initial call, developing the relationship,
presentation, etc.
2. Sales Probability Scorecard – A Probability Scorecard is like the yard markers on a
football field. These markers tell you how many yards you must go to score and how
many yards you must protect to keep from being scored upon.
The Sales Probability Scorecard will tell you, with a high level of accuracy, what the
likelihood is that you will either win or lose the deal. It will also tell you where you are in
your sales process.
3. Sales Huddles –Just like in football, huddles are a communication system that provide
coaches with real time information so you can make real time decisions.
Set a schedule of Sales Huddles and stick to it! Get real-time information and coach to
this information.
4. Personal Goal Setting to Business Plan – Most teams have a period prior to the season
when the staff discusses objectives and goals. The discussions define objectives based
upon previous performance, expected competition and talent level of the returning and
newly recruited team.
Set Goals prior to each fiscal year based upon past year’s performance, the competition,
experience and sales talent of your team. Have each salesperson identify personal goals
and translate these to their personal business plan.
5. Sales Success Formula –Each team anticipates what it must do to win a game; metrics
like- How many yards on first down are needed? Necessary number of average yards per
completion and completion percentage? Necessary number of completed passes?
The Sales Success Formula will help you identify the critical steps in the sales process,
the conversion ratios and the choke points for coaching your salespeople. Get specific!
6. Ideal Week – Every team goes into a game with an ideal game plan. All know what
plays they want to run in various situations on offense. They know what defenses they
will call based upon field position and tendencies of the opponent. Flexibility is implied
and understood because field position changes in an instant but each team goes into a
game with a plan and strategy.
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 2
Have a game plan for your salespeople and their activity each week. Know what your
ideal sales week looks like.
7. Pre-Call Checklist – In games, plays are most often called by the offensive coordinator
from the sideline. However, during weekly practice, the coordinator goes over a series of
pre-snap situations with the offense so they can quickly modify the play depending upon
what the other team’s defense does.
You and your salespeople should prepare for any substantial appointment with a pre-call
checklist. Help your salespeople prepare to execute the sales steps and Q3 (Qualify,
Qualify, Qualify) the prospect on the call. Role-play the appointment to help them flex,
depending upon the prospect’s actions and reactions.
8. Post-Call Debrief – After every game and sometimes after practice, the coaches review
film and compare it to the plays or defenses called. This allows for a measurement of
performance against the planned execution (Pre-Call Checklist).
The Post-Call Debrief in selling allows the sales manager to evaluate, offer corrective
action, coach and suggest appropriate prospect follow up steps to the salesperson.
9. Performance Recording– Digital audio and video devices give football teams instant
feedback on practice and game performance. These tools must be used to record practice
and games so that actual performance can be observed. Observing footage is more
impactful for both the performer and the coach than trying to coach data reports or
personal observation.
Record role-plays in sales meeting. Your salespeople will benefit greatly with the ability
to see and hear themselves. Their performance can then be coached, compared and
measured against best practices.
Each of these sales productivity tools are detailed in this eBook. As a bonus, sign up below for
your 10th sales productivity tool - our Weekly Sales Brew!
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 31. Practice Schedule
It is important to note that, in football:
• Understanding your opponent is critical
• Reviewing practice and game performance is needed
• A team must have a solid strategy for all aspects of the game
• Great athletes must be able to make game time adjustments and decisions
• An occasional good bounce can be additive!
At the end of the day, however, improving skills, practicing the game plan, and getting feedback
from the Practice Sessions are crucial for success!
When I was coaching, we had 30 practice sessions before each game. Each practice session was
at least 2 hours long. For every hour on the field, there was at least 1 hour in the classroom and at
least 1 hour of film study or playbook study. This was all for about 8-10 minutes of actual action
on the field.
How much time are you spending practicing to improve your sales management skills? How
much time are you spending coaching your people to improve their craft? Just because you hire
or have experienced salespeople who have been selling for 20+ years does not mean that you
don’t need to run practice sessions with your team.
The greatest coaches in the game will tell you how wrong you are to believe that experience, or
years in the profession, means that less time is needed in practice. “Practice makes perfect”, but
more importantly, “Perfect Practice makes Perfect Performance”.
Practice as a Sales Productivity Tool.
According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, 10,000 hours of practice is the tipping point of
greatness. The book looks at a number of “outliers”, people who are extraordinarily proficient in
certain subjects or skills. There are contributing factors to practice that are connected to their
competency and eventual expertise in a skill.
At Anthony Cole Training Group, we work with sales managers to help them focus and develop
their ideal week. Within that ideal week is time allocated for practice. Practice is a requirement
for improving skill and performance across the board.
What should practice look like?
Your practice should include the following sales practice components: Drill for Skill (on-the-
spot short demonstrations of a skill), Role-Playing and Strategy Development. To accomplish
these exercises, you should have pre and post call checklists as well as phone call scorecards and
data from your sales huddles.
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 4These data points act as “video” of how you or your people are actually performing. Using the
data and real time information allows you to make your coaching and practice sessions more
intentional. The practice time must be scheduled on your calendar and on your sales team’s
calendar. All salespeople must attend. This is non-negotiable.
2. Sales Probability Scorecard
The Sales Probability Scorecard is like the yard markers on a football field. The yard markers
give you a clear, definitive look at how much ground must be covered to score; or in the case of
defense, how much ground you have left to defend.
An effective Sales Probability Scorecard tells you what information you are missing and the
likelihood of closing a specific opportunity.
You may already use a tool or system like this in your sales organization that is meant to track,
collect, manage, and create movement in your sales pipeline. It may provide forecasting, and
(hopefully) increase sales. But if the sales enablement tool you are using isn’t built around
specific sales criteria, selling activities and a milestone-centric sales process, your predictive
capabilities are no better than a crystal ball for forecasting.
The milestone-centric sales process breaks down the step-by-step accomplishments required to
effectively create, qualify and close business. Normally, salespeople check off the major items
on their checklists accomplished in the sales process—like uncovering a compelling reason or
“pain”. An effective probability scorecard tool provides the salesperson with a list of secondary
objectives that must be accomplished. Here is an example of the first step identified in our
Effective Selling System and the required secondary objectives:
Uncovering Compelling Reasons: “The pain of not changing must be greater than the pain of
changing.”
• Compelling reasons are: “must fix” problems, rather than “want to fix” problems
• The result of not making a change has been monetized
• There is a “personal” reason why the problem has to be fixed
• The incumbent has been unable to solve the problem and the prospect can/is willing to
change providers
Checking off these secondary items gives the salesperson, and the sales manager, a more
complete picture of what has been addressed and what still must be uncovered. If the identified
secondary items cannot be discussed, everyone has a clearer view of the opportunity. Or the lack
of opportunity.
Your Sales Probability Scorecard should:
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 5• Establish the items, primary and secondary, that will qualify the prospect (can be industry
specific)
• Identify the most important or predictive factors
• Include a baseline percentage for quantifying a "closeable opportunity" (i.e. 70% score is
considered closeable).
3. Sales Huddles
I was first introduced to the idea of "Sales Huddles" when I heard Verne Harnish, Founder and
President of Gazelles, speak at Objective Management Group’s Annual International
Conference. At that conference, Verne described Huddles as:
1. A communication process that allows for sharing of real-time information
2. An opportunity to focus on "burning platform" issues for a team or company
3. A way to bring sharp focus and attention to a critical business driver
4. The most important 15 minutes in any company
Over the years, I have used football huddles as an example of how sales huddles should
work. Generally speaking, there are two types of huddles. One is what you see in the middle of a
football field when the players gather around a single individual to get instruction on the next
play. The other type is what you see on the sidelines after a unit comes off the field when they
gather around the offensive or defensive unit coach to receive information about what was seen
in the press box, and how that relates to what they will attempt going forward.
Your Sales Huddles should provide real-time information, so that you can make real-time
decisions and provide real-time feedback or coaching.
Sales Huddles are one of THE KEYS to driving more immediate and productive results from a
sales team. If you wait 90 days as a manager to get data about how your team is conducting itself
on a daily basis, it will be outdated and may not be of any use to you or your salespeople.
One of my favorite questions when working with sales managers in our Performance
Management Class is this:
“When you get lost, when do you want to know that you're lost?”
The answer to that question 100% of the time is, “As soon as possible".
And that is why you must have real-time huddles!
Gathering real-time information allows you, as a salesperson or manager to make real-time
adjustments to a specific sales situation or your overall sales growth strategy. As in football, you
must collect huddle data and the business intelligence from the data in real time and you must
promptly share this intelligence with the team to improve performance.
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 6Only then will the team benefit from the huddles, thus reducing resistance to the process.
Additionally, you can make in-the-moment decisions on sales opportunities and long-term
decisions on training and development, recruiting and talent.
4. Personal Goal Setting to Personal Business Plan
I set my first personal goal at 9-years-old. I had just walked off the field from my first day at
football practice, and when my dad asked how it went, I told him that I loved it and that I would
go on to play college football. He told me to take off my helmet and shoulder pads and to start
running laps around the field. He said, "If you are going to play college football, then you must
be in great shape." I started running and didn’t stop until the end of my career at UConn.
Goal Setting best practices starts with an individual’s personal goals. We then then help our
training participants convert personal goals into business plans. Those personal business plans
include practice management objectives and specific activities that must be executed.
What are the personal things your people want to achieve in their lives? What are the daily tasks
each must accomplish to achieve their BIG things? For example, if their big thing is to be the top
producer in the company, they need specific sales goals for:
• Increasing average size sale
• Improving closing ratios
• Asking for and getting more introductions
But these sales goals don’t drive behaviors. It is the commitment, desire or motivation to succeed
that personally drives the necessary behaviors! Those goals look more like:
• Send my kids to the college of their choice without debt
• Have a cabin on the lake
• Provide enough income so that my spouse can choose to be a stay-at-home parent
• Eliminate/ reduce debt
• Have a financially independent lifestyle at retirement
Effective personal goals must be non-negotiable. They must be shared with others who care
enough to help hold you accountable to performing the required activities.
With knowledge of each salesperson’s personal goals, a sales manager can most effectively help
individuals stay focused and motivated.
If you're interested in conducting a Personal Goal Setting to Personal Business Plan
workshop, send me an email at tony@anthonycoletraining.com with the Subject - Personal Goal
Setting Workshop. This is a favorite delivery of mine because it is so motivating and helps
salespeople do the hard work of prospecting daily.
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 75. Sales Success Formula As a young student and to further my goal of playing college football, I had to have a Success Formula that included a strength and conditioning routine. I had to eat the right foods (My dad always threatened to tell Coach Cacia if I didn’t eat my salad). I had to be coachable. I had to take care of the bumps and bruises that came with playing football. When I got into the "real" sales world of life insurance, I was introduced to the One Card System created by Al Granum. At National Life of Vermont, we were given a box with index cards and a Success Manual. On these cards, we identified the various stages of a sales process through which the prospect progressed. We recorded our activity in the Success Manual. Today that Success Formula and sales process should exist in your CRM. A Success Formula is effective, but only if... You have a sales team who is committed and motivated and who takes responsibility for their decisions, actions and outcomes. Every salesperson knows the behaviors that will make him successful. Salespeople know they must reach out to prospects, schedule appointments, disqualify tire-kickers and companies that don’t fit their ideal prospect profile. They know they must close sales, service accounts promptly and more. There isn’t anything mystical about what it takes to succeed. The challenge is for the salesperson to be sufficiently committed and disciplined to do the activities identified by their personal Success Formula. When salespeople fail, it isn’t usually because they lack the skills or product/industry knowledge needed to succeed. Most salespeople fail because they won’t do the activities required to be successful. We have tools, including a pre-hire assessment and sales force evaluations, that identify whether a salesperson will or won’t sell and why. To gain a better understanding of someone’s potential to be successful in sales, it is important to have a deep understanding of the following: • Will to Sell • Sales DNA • Sales Competencies • Sales Skills Not having this information about your sales team is like coaching a football team without knowing the desires, skills and tendencies of the players that you rely upon to make the right plays and to win the game. To assess your current or incoming talent and their ability and willingness to do the right activities and make the right decisions, you can request report samples of findings identified in Objective Management Group’s – Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis. ©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 8
6. Ideal Sales Week
I graduated as an Education Major from the University of Connecticut specializing in Secondary
Physical Education. In short, I was a gym teacher. I thought that gym teachers picked a sport
they wanted to teach the students, put equipment out on the gym floor, demonstrated what and
how and then stood by with a whistle. Little did I know they spent nights and weekend hours
constructing lesson plans and class schedules.
When I coached at the University of Cincinnati, we constructed plans and practice schedules
weekly. We would look at film of the upcoming opponent and based upon intel from our last
game, we would determine what we needed to most work on. We developed practices and game
plans for execution each week.
Of course, a lot can go wrong to throw off the Ideal Week practice and game plan in football and
in professional selling. Most Time Management programs fail because participants fail to be
slave to the Ideal Sales Week they planned.
Below are the keys to creating an Ideal Sales Week and making it work for you and your sales
team:
1. Identify the must do weekly activities. Remember that about 20% of your activities
generate roughly 80% of your results. Identify and pursue only the 20% must do
activities that generate results.
2. Prioritize your most impactful activities.
3. Allocate either hours or a % of your total work week to be spent on the must do
activities. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a 40-hour work week in selling.
4. Block out time on the schedule to perform your must do activities.
5. Block out time for fires, the unplanned, the important-but-not-urgent events that will
occur.
6. Stay committed to the schedule:
1. Only urgent and important events should throw you off your Ideal Week. Urgent
and important events include things like a top 10% client has a can’t-wait problem
or you have a personal, unavoidable emergency. Ignore the gnat bites- pay
attention to the alligator bites!
2. Attend the important, but not urgent, events in the time you allocate to "fires".
Here is a graphic of what an Ideal Sales Week might look like on the next page:
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 97. Pre-Call Checklist Going into a sales call without a documented, practiced, and rehearsed plan is the equivalent to playing a football game without film time, practice time, meeting time and strategy development. Like a coach telling the team “We’re going to wing it today". Minus the preparation required to succeed and a pre-game strategy, the team will most likely fail. The same is true of salespeople and sales teams that “wing it”. We know from extensive research of the 2 million salespeople evaluated by the Objective Management Group, and through our own data-crunching of the Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis, that there are specific characteristics that make salespeople successful. It is no surprise that top producers are extremely strong in the competencies you want in a salesperson-- Hunter, Consultative Seller, Value Seller, Qualifier and Presentation Ability. Top salespeople are also extremely competent in executing a consistent, milestone-centric sales process. That means that typically, their pipelines will be more accurate, their sales cycle will be shorter, and their closing ratios will be higher. Why? Because They Follow A Systematic Process! Years ago, Marsh McLennan, following the tenets of Strategic Selling, would "Blue Sheet" opportunities to determine if they were qualified and closable. This form and process forced salespeople to identify and uncover information needed to further vet a prospect, helping to eliminate time and energy spent on non-prospects. Anthony Cole Training’s Sales Managed Environment® Program takes each client through a very specific and detailed process of building, implementing and executing Pre-Call Checklists and Post-Call Meetings, Check Lists and Scorecards. The process of using a scorecard more accurately defines the probability of closing a sale. The Check Lists identifies the steps that a salesperson must take PRIOR to presenting a solution. The Pre- and Post-Call Meetings solidify a salesperson’s game plan, outlining the items she must cover and identify next. ©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 10
Close more business, more quickly and at higher margins by developing and implementing Pre and Post Call Meetings, Check Lists and Scorecards! 8. Post-Call Debrief Back in my playing days, we had to wait a day to get game film developed and delivered to the coach's office, so that we could review players and performance. A couple of weeks ago, our Defensive Coordinator at Moeller HS used a tablet to coach his defense based on what had just happened on the football field. With today’s digital technology, you can get your game or practice video feedback immediately, enabling you to coach in real-time. You can do the same with salespeople. The reason the game film is so effective is because film presents reality. There are no opportunities for excuses, shifting of blame, or hiding from the truth. In the film room, fierce conversations take place about converted and missed opportunities, the amount of effort exhibited, the outcome of a specific play and more. An immediate feedback loop like this is effective while the encounter is fresh in everyone’s minds. Your Post-Call Debriefs must work the same way if you are going to accomplish the following: • Improve skills • Change behaviors • Close more business, more quickly at higher margins To do this effectively, you must have an Effective Sales Process that identifies each step and the qualification information that must be discovered in each step. This will provide the checklist that you will follow and check off as your salesperson progresses through the sales process. The salesperson must gather all the necessary information to progress to the next step. This will help each of your salespeople to be more realistic and less idealistic in their projections. When we teach EPAS – Emergency Pipeline Analysis System – we look at several opportunities in the pipeline and calculate their probability of closing. Thus, if we examine 5 opportunities and the average closing probability is 75% or greater and none of the opportunities close, we have a clear indication that something is wrong: • Either the producer is falsifying data or • The producer is failing to effectively execute the sales steps In the end, what you wish to accomplish with a Post-Call Debrief is to help salespeople clearly evaluate each opportunity: Is this a qualified prospect? Is the prospect willing and able to commit money to make the problem go away? Is he the decision-maker? Is there a board that must approve? ©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 11
The Post-Call Debrief will help salespeople recognize bad or unclear opportunities and when
they should walk away or move a prospect out of their pipeline and into the contact database.
Unqualified prospects are time-wasters and falsely inflate pipelines. A pipeline that includes
unqualified prospects also allows salespeople, and consequently the company, a false sense of
security and poor forecasting data.
9. Performance Recording
In our world today, audio recordings are constantly being used to improve skills, check on
compliance issues, and improve the quality of customer service. Think about the last time you
called to check on a bank statement, a credit card charge or to make a change in a flight
reservation. "This call will be recorded."
When that happens, what do you do?
1. Do you hang up because you don’t want the conversation to be recorded?
2. Stay on the phone because you don’t care if it’s recorded?
3. Ask that the conversation not be recorded?
If you are like most people, you don’t give it a second thought. So how can use performance
recordings to improve your skills and the skills of those on your team?
1. You should take time to role play in every sales meeting.
2. On occasion (once or twice a week), record the roleplay and then play the recording back
for discussion in a sales meeting.
3. Have your team evaluate the role play objective and responses during the exercise. Ask
yourself, or your people, these questions after the role play is complete:
o Did the salesperson get the prospect involved in the conversation as soon as
possible?
o Did the salesperson ask permission to tell the prospect “Why” she was calling?
o Did she “look, act and sound” like a typical sales person?
o If you were the prospect would you have continued to listen?
o Would you have scheduled an appointment?
o Was the presented value proposition compelling enough to prompt you to ask
questions?
o Did the salesperson start "selling on the phone"?
o Did the prospect get invited to meet or did the salesperson invite the prospect to
meet?
o On a scale of 1-10, how well would you rate the salesperson’s ability to handle
objections or questions?
4. Record your 1-on-1 coaching sessions, especially if you demonstrate what you expect
your salespeople to do on a call.
5. Make audio and video recording part of any and every training program.
6. Provide objective feedback to recordings sent to you by your sales team.
©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 12You should expect some resistance and push-back initially. Remember these are
salespeople who must be strong enough and confident enough to allow themselves to be
recorded. If they are neither, you might have the wrong person in the sales seat.
Make sure you do these three things:
1. Keep and archive the really good audio performances and use them for training new
people and for conducting more effective sales meetings.
2. Give your people several chances to record so they can practice to perfect. Allow them to
submit the recording they feel is their best effort. This leads to the improvement of skill
through self-practice and evaluation.
3. Create a competition by implementing a “Sales Skills Contest”. Create a round-robin
event with teams. Each team practices, role-plays and records their best role-plays for the
specific skill like The Initial Call. Each team then nominates their best participant to
compete against the other teams’ nominees. The winning team and individual get a prize.
To find out more, visit our Sales Productivity Tools resource below:
https://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/sales-productivity-tools
Anthony Cole Training Group, LLC
Cincinnati, Ohio
www.anthonycoletraining.com
(877) 635-5371
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