This article is a quick and easy experiment to understand how you perceive your selling skills as a small business owner. Whether or not you are frustrated with your selling organization, wanting a deeper look at how effective your salespeople are, reviewing your selling processes and formalization, and other ideas about what makes selling groups thrive.

Where Are You?

We have prepared a short test to determine what might be occurring inside your sales organization today.

There is no right answer, and it can either be yes, no or not applicable.

We suggest you score the effect each condition has inside your business by using a 0 to 10 scale: 0 is not affected; > 5 is significant, and ten means it is a severe impact.

Sales Problem Indicators

Scores, Statements, and Questions

1. ______ You are a subject matter expert with either product or service breadth and depth. Is sales leadership one of your fortes? The weaker your skill, mark your score high.

2. ______ You are enthusiastic about building your company. Are you often frustrated and struggling with the time and effort spent to improve your sales team's performance, especially when coupled with the financial risk of hiring or retaining a professional sales manager? Score your frustration level.

3. ______ The sales team size is too big to be managed by you and too small to hire a competent sales manager. Does this occur for you? Score this question high if your answer is yes.

4. ______You have promoted a salesperson inside your sales group to focus on sales management. Does this person also carry a sales territory? Is the salesperson’’s management skill low? Score high if the answer is yes.

5. ______Many leaders do not have the required experience, knowledge, and/or process for hiring sales leadership or salespeople. How does your skill and knowledge base rate? Score high if these categories are low.

6. ______Many selling teams have intermediate or less skilled salespeople who produce only 10% to 15% of the sales. In comparison, your one or two high performers produce 85% to 90%: you probably have a mix of A, B, and C salespeople but can’t get increased results. Is this a familiar condition of your teams? Score this high if this is the case in your business.

7. ______ Many small business owners have few formalized processes in place in the selling organization, which would bring accountability with repeatable activities. Non-formalized groups typically include limited use of technology; older ineffective lead referral and lead generation; lack of sales predictability; low sales closure rates; unknown reasons for loss of business or loss of sale; and inability to track all customer/client sales and marketing activities. How would you rate these conditions in these areas? Score high if you answered yes to many of these items.

8. ______Sales training tends to stick better when there are processes in place, and the training addresses them. Has your investment in sales training produced the results for your business? If not, score high.

9. ______Forecasting and predictability are conditions of knowing what’s going on, being realistic, and adjusting to meet the needs of your prospects and customers. Are your expectation of incremental growth either limited or producing none at all? Score high if so.

[______] Your Total Score

Conclusion

Ponder what you have just read, rated, and gained some awareness about you and your sales organization. If your total score is higher than 50, we invite you to learn how to figure out what’s really occurring inside your sales organization. Let us help you determine what might be contributing to these conditions. Find out more by scheduling a free thirty-minute telephone consultation by clicking the “Investigate Further” button below.

Footnote

The background data included in this article has been provided by CEO Focus. The data has been captured over a twelve year period covering 2005 through 2017.