8 Sales Controls to Protect Your Company as You Scale
Wayne, a business coaching client of my company, complained about how much time his sales team took for him to manage each week.
“David,” he lamented, “They just do the craziest things. They make price concessions when they don’t have to. They promise our customers unrealistic delivery dates. They even make up things to say about our products sometimes.”
Have you ever struggled to herd a sales force into line? You don’t want to kill their drive and sales, but you need to rein in some of their out-of-bounds behaviors.
Here are 8 sales controls to protect your company as you scale.
- List negotiating parameters your sales team can work within out in the field. Examples might be pre-approved concessions your sales team can use to close a sale, discounts or credits your front-line staff are authorized to give when dealing with a purchasing customer in your store, and so on.
- Establish an approval process for sales exceptions. For example,if a concession is worth less than $x, the sales manager must verbally approve it; if a concession exceeds that amount, the sales manager must physically sign off on it.
- Require standardized sales paperwork and contracts.
- Provide sales team with formalized sales scripting.
- Require employment contracts that protect the proprietary nature of your client list. Possibly parcel out access to that database among the sales people so that they never have access to more of that list than they actually need.
- Require sales people to use only company-controlled contact phone numbers, email addresses, social media accounts, etc. with clients. They should never be expected or allowed to give out personal contact information, all contact should flow through company controlled contact mechanisms.
- Provide a direct line for client feedback that doesn’t allow sales people to filter out negative messages.
- Record clear and accurate sales metrics. These would include daily dials made, number of customer visits per week, closing ratios, retention rates, return rates, net referral score, and so on.
I hope these ideas help you take back control of your sales force.
