Housing is beginning to show some real signs of coming back,
the DOW Jones is hitting record highs, your modular home factory is running
every day and quotes and orders are both at the highest they’ve been in 5
years.
But something else has shown up, the discouraged sales rep.
Even though others on the sales team are seeing an upturn in sales, one or more
reps seem to be falling behind.
The reality is that when their sales efforts don’t seem to
be producing quotes and sales, even the most experienced sales reps tend to
become discouraged. They spend more and more time struggling to meet their
sales quotas and working less and less efficiently.
Feeling increasingly powerless in that pursuit, the modular
home sales rep may begin to press their builders for sales and prospect for new
builders in effective ways. For
instance, they may arrange plant tours and formal presentations for builders
that have not even been qualified or who haven’t yet agreed they need modular
construction. They allow prospective builders to milk them for information,
including pricing, without any commitment from the builder and even worse, they
fail to defend the company’s margin and make unprofitable sales in order to
achieve sales quotas.
Another source of discouragement is assigned territories. Put
yourself in this situation. There are five sales reps in your company. Four
have sales territories that include part the areas hit by Hurricane Sandy last
fall and your territory is
Virginia
sales rep. All the other reps’ phones are ringing off the hook with quotes from
their builders and your builders are just waking up from a long winter’s nap.
So what’s the bottom line for the sales manager? Sales never
result efficiently and with maximum revenue unless the sales process is
continually and closely managed. But before the sales process can be managed, it
must be manageable.
The task for the modular factory sales manager is to create
a method to look at each sales rep’s efforts and determine if those efforts are
what the company expects. Getting a huge number of quotes from post ‘Sandy’ New
Jersey and only closing a small number of them will use up the factory’s
resources quicker and at higher costs than the WV rep that has formed lasting a
‘total sales solution’ with the builder.
As mentioned in previous articles, sales reps can no longer
be order takers, today they must be the builder’s marketing expert, business
plan monitor, the builder’s eyes in the factory and lastly a resource for sales
techniques. “Total Sales Solution”
From the sales manager’s perspective, developing the total
solution means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic and step-by-step
outline of what sales reps are expected to do. This outline includes the
activities and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish
with their builders, the documentation they should use, the issues they must
discuss and solve with both their builders and prospects and tangible goals
they must reach.
Such a strategy can lead to a higher level of success with the
builder base but sadly, over 70% of company upper management and owners said
that their sales managers were neither adequately skilled to take this step nor
were focused on the solution instead of just hounding their sales reps for
quotes and sales.
Although every factory sales manager appreciates the
importance of “Total Sales Solution”,
surprisingly few invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales
process – a process that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide the
sales reps and permit effective management of their efforts.
As a consequence, left to their own devices, modular sales
reps can easily become discouraged, and performance levels dip.
If a sales manager thinks that his/her only job is to get
sales, then it might be time for management to either begin working with the
sales manager to implement a total sales system or look for the talent outside
from outside.
If you need help evaluating you present sales system, email
the Modcoach today and we can get started.
