The Sales Head Office; Selling and Sales Management

I’m watching my Habs play right now, and although they’re winning tonight, the team has terrible chemistry. They play for themselves and don’t back each other up. Watching the Habs play got me thinking about team chemistry and the impact it has on a sales group.

A team with great chemistry is a lot of fun to manage. The reps support, motivate and coach each other. Discussions on your team calls are dynamic and there are emails going out daily from the team with success stories and market intelligence. Morale is high, everyone wants to win together and see their colleagues over achieve. And for a manager, turn over is low.

On the flip side a team with bad chemistry can be a nightmare. There is no energy as a group and individual is often viewed with cynicism. Best practices, and inter-territory leads, are kept close to the chest. The culture sucks, turn over is high and there is a big spread between your top and bottom performers.

Here are a few tips to build team chemistry in your sales group:

Sales teams with good chemistry are high performing teams. As a sales manager you own the culture of your sales team, make sure your reps are working as a unit and your team numbers will improve!

I like to keep my sales interviews with potential candidate loose. A sales interview is not much different from a sales call. Like a sales call I want the conversation to flow and to transition from one topic to the next.

I hate canned interviews with a set question list. I’ve been on the other side of them, for some pretty decent opportunities, and I couldn’t get my head around what the manager was trying to accomplish with a rigid set of questions. The interviews end up being choppy and awkward. The candidates prepares for a list of 35 standard interview questions and I don’t believe the manager gets a good assessment of the candidate.

Sales interviewing should be a fluid process. To support this I use what I call my scribble matrix.

I take an 8.5 x 11 and write the candidates name in the middle of the sheet. Prior to the interview I identify 5 or 6 areas that I want to drill down on; activity levels, closing techniques, communication, teamwork, time management, etc. I use these 5 or 6 points to guide the interview and drill down from there.

My experience using this framework has been great. I find the candidates aren’t expecting an open format like this and you get a great snapshot of how they perform in sales calls.

I also find the candidate will let down their guard and tell you valuable - in some cases damning - information.

One that sticks in mind is a candidate that interviewed well but felt so comfortable that at the end of the call he let me know how hard a time he has getting out of bed in the morning! Next!

My current team is generating excellent prospecting activity. They are willing to hit the street every day and meet with business owners to uncover opportunities.

The biggest challenge my team is having is managing follow up; more accurately ensuring that follow up is taking place in a timely fashion.

I was scouring the web the other day and found a video from a Vanouver sales trainer named Shane Gibson.

Shane highlights a great eample of persistant, creative follow up, that ultimately led to a sale. A good lesson for all of us:

I recently accepted a position as a Sales Manager for a large Canadian payment processing company. I’ve created a new category at SaleHO.com to reflect my thoughts on where the industry is headed, and this is the first post under that new category. I’ll try to stay unbiased and talk about the industry as a whole rather than specific providers

Knowledge is Power - Sir Francis Bacon

When it comes to payment processing, nothing could be more accurate. The industry has changed drastically the past 12 months and merchants are feeling the pinch. Prior to 2008, all a merchant needed to understand was his discount rate for each card type (Visa, M/C, Amex) and his fixed fees (statement, machine rental, push fees).

Fast forward to fall 2008 and the card associations introduced a new set of fees. Today, on top of their discount rate, a merchant needs to understand two new layers of fees; assessment fees and non-qualified transaction fees. Here is a breakdown of the new fees.

Assessment Fee’s
MasterCard went Public in mid 2006 and Visa followed suit in mid 2008. In 2008, in Canada, both card brands levied a new fee in order to increase revenue. MasterCard’s rate is 0.069% per transaction and Visa’s per transaction charge is 0.06%

Non-Qualified Transactions
In 2008 Visa and MasterCard began differentiating between card types (corporate, infinite) and the manner in which cards were being handled by merchants. Any card - manner of processing - that was deemed unqualified was assessed a surcharge. As an example, a domestic Visa that was keyed into a merchant’s terminal no longer qualified for the negotiated discount rate. Extra Interchange fee’s applied.

Whether the changes that came down were fair or not is, in my mind anyways, less interesting than the way some of the processing companies handled the change. Most of the major Canadian providers saw this as an opportunity to take margin on these new fees - as much as 500% mark-up!

So what can a merchant do?

1) Make sure that you are receiving your statements and understand the new fees. Believe it or not we come across merchants every day that were opted out of a paper statement for an online one, and have no idea how to access their billing.

2) Shop around. Most people are with the payment processor that their bank represents, they don’t even realize there is choice in the market. Contrary to what your bank may have told you, changing processors is simple and straightforward. All the major processors can settle to any bank account with next day settlement.

3) Read your processors communications and understand the changes coming down the pipe. If you don’t understand a change, call your service rep or the 1-800 number on your terminal and hold your provider accountable!