All high-performing salespeople understand and consistently execute the top 10 behaviors necessary for success, which we outlined in our new Sandler book, The Sales Coach’s Playbook. Here are the top ten questions I utilize when helping salespeople benchmark and raise their performance:
1. What kind of prospecting activity have you been doing for new lead generation?
2. What type of relationship building have you been doing with current clients and prospects?
3. Who have you disqualified as prospects who are never going to make a purchase?
4. Who have you qualified by determining the prospect’s reason to buy, willingness to invest, and decision process?
5. When are you planning to make those presentations and how have you matched your solutions to the prospect’s PAIN?
6. What are you currently doing in your behavior execution plan to ensure success in the future?
7. How have you been gaining knowledge about selling, insight about prospects and competition, and evaluating the marketplace?
8. How have you been expanding and developing business with existing customers?
9. What is your territory management plan for maximizing our business in your territory?
10. How have you been executing our sales system and what is one part of the system you need help improving?
As a sales coach, you need to benchmark the performance of each behavior to determine whether they are performed at acceptable levels or not. It is important to utilize a scale rating behavior with a 1 to 10 performance rating. This scale will allow you develop standards not only for each individual but across your team. Once your salespeople become accustomed to you asking these questions on a regular basis, they will begin to adjust their behavior and improve their sales results!
To learn how to break the performance code of your team and coach your salespeople to higher levels of success, get The Sales Coach’s Playbook.
