Building a Cutting Edge Sales Team

By Chris BrowningFor the benefit of Sales Teams everywhere
Fundamentals for Building and
Leading a Cutting-Edge
Sales Team
Learning’s from sales leadership roles with Gallo
Wines, Sara Lee, Coca-Cola, Blue Rhino, Peerless
Coffee and Tea, Circle Foods and Tyson Foods

Contents
 People
 Process
 Profit
 Product, Services, and Value Positioning
 Customer Targets
 Relationships
 Culture
 Change
(The fundamentals addressed in this document are condensed to keep this document
short and simple. A deeper review of each fundamental is recommended.)

It’s All About People
 Teams are made up of people. People open businesses, run
them, and succeed or fail in them. The number one priority of
sales leaders is to nourish their people so they can be more
effective in the work place.
 People are born with different strengths. If they leverage their
strengths, they are more likely to be successful than if they try
to leverage their weaknesses. It is very important to put people
in work roles that utilize their natural strengths.
Action - When you hire people you must use a process that identifies
a candidate’s strengths and matches those strengths with
position requirements. At Coca-Cola we used a hiring system that
identified the core competencies needed for the position so the
hiring team could match the strengths of the candidate to the
role.

Building Confidence
and Passion in Your Team
 Building confidence in each team member is critical to successful
selling. We all recognize confidence when we see it—in athletes,
actors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, buyers, sellers, etc. People
want to be around confident people in all areas of life. People
like to buy from confident people.
 In sales, confidence comes from experience and ongoing
training/learning about the business world, your industry, the
products and services that you provide, and selling and
relationship building techniques.
Action – A top priority must be training in the above-listed areas on
an ongoing basis. Drill your sales team frequently to ensure that
their confidence continues to increase. With confidence comes
passion. This combination is very powerful and does wonders for
gaining new business and keeping and growing existing business.

The Right Person in the
Right Role Needs a
Nourishing Work Environment
 In Marcus Buckingham’s book First Break All The Rules, he identifies
12 elements that provide a nourishing work environment for people.
They are as follows:
• I know what is expected of me at work.
• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
• At work I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition of praise for doing good
work.
• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
• There is someone at work who encourages my development.
• At work, my opinions seem to count.
• The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
• My associates are committed to doing quality work.
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
• This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
Action - Make sure you are creating the above conditions within your department. A
nourishing work environment encourages people to do their best work. When people do
their best work, they create great results.

The Importance of Giving as a
Leader and Sales Professional
 Giving is one of the fundamentals of living a successful life. Giving to
both your team and your customers is also essential as a leader and sales
professional. The following are some examples of leadership giving to
help your team succeed:
• Clear direction on what needs to be accomplished.
• Clear goals and results against those goals.
• Clear guidelines on compensation.
• Support on working through challenging situations.
• Recognition on accomplishments.
• Working side-by-side with team members on all activities.
• Working on sales leads and handing them over to team members to close and get full credit.
 The following are some examples of giving as a sales professional to help
your customers:
• Bringing customers solutions to their problems.
• Showing customers how much you appreciate their business by writing a note or by taking them out to
lunch or dinner.
• Sending them articles of interest on their business or industry.
Action – Find opportunities to give everyday to your team and your customers.
This habit will bring tremendous satisfaction and reward!

The Right Work Processes =
Working Smart
 Process is how you get the work done, and in the sales
force, processes generally fall into two focus areas:
• Processes for doing the work of the sales team (i.e.,
managing, sales calls, sales planning, budgets, product knowledge, sales
technologies).
• Processes for communicating with other company
departments (managing activities that affect customer satisfaction
and sales, such as distribution, order fulfillment, accounts receivable,
quality assurance, manufacturing).
 Sales is the conduit to the marketplace and must be
totally connected to each department that touches the
customer.

Process…Cross-Department
Performance
Management System
 Cross-department performance management systems are critical to
getting work done in the most productive way possible. Departments that
share in the same goals, performance measurements, and planning
processes generally work better together to achieve those goals.
 A good performance management system includes three key
components:
• A “continuous” planning process (plan, execute, measure, and re-plan)
• Shared performance measurements and goals between departments
• Frequent cross-department performance reviews
Action – Get the departments together that work
closely with sales and the customer and jointly
develop a cross-department performance
management system.

Process... Excel Based Sales
Management Tools
 I have often said you can rule the world with Excel…and you can build any sales
reporting tool you need on Excel. The two most critical reports for sales people are
reporting call activity on existing accounts and the Sales Funnel for planning actions
on closing new business. It is important to have this information turned in on a
weekly basis to keep strong focus on these critical activities.
 These reports should track the following information:
• Customer name
• Clearly stated sales objectives
• Volume and revenue impact of the sales objective
• Next steps including what is needed from other departments
• Sales funnel status…probability of closure and closure date for new
business
• Number of calls per day, week, month, etc.
• Number of miles traveled
Action – Develop and implement sales tools so the sales
team is focused on the activities that drive sales.

Process... Sales Technology
 Business is all about people. The more you know about your current and
potential customers the better. Trust in a relationship happens when
customers feel that you understand their business and personal needs
and wins. Once you have this insight, your sales team can connect their
business solutions to meet the customer’s needs, both business and
personal.
 I have reviewed and used many sales technologies over the years. The
best in my opinion are the selling technologies from Miller Heiman…
especially the Strategic Selling and Conceptual Selling programs.
 Implementing a selling technology allows your sales team to look at
selling situations in a holistic and structured way. It also standardizes the
communication and sales terminology within your sales team
Action – Select and implement selling technologies for your sales
team and spend the money and time to train your team so they
become expert in using these technologies. This is one of the
best investments a sales leader can make. Also, make sure you
use the technologies so they become operating religion.

Process...
The Sales Funnel
 The Sales Funnel tool is the most important tool in the sales
professional’s arsenal. I have seen many sales professionals exceed goals
by managing the Sales Funnel tool successfully.
 The Sales Funnel prioritizes activities to close sales. Simply put, the first
priority of all sales professionals is to spend time closing prospects that
have a 90% probability of closing. The second priority is to survey the
marketplace for qualified prospects to put in the funnel. This surprises
most sales professionals as they think working on prospects in the early
stages of the Sales Funnel would be the logical second priority…but if you
do nothing but work on prospects in the funnel, when you are done your
Sales Funnel will be empty.
 Know the sales cycle of different customer types and specific customers
in your funnel. Closing sales will take different amounts of time based on
how customers make their buying decisions.
Action – If you do one thing only for implementing sales
technologies, make sure it is the Sales Funnel. This tool is
the foundation of sales work!

Your Existing Customers are
a Great Source of Growth
 Hunting new business is very important to grow sales; but do not
forget about your existing customers. Keeping and growing your
existing customers needs to be a top priority. Existing customers
are usually more profitable customers as your costs to do
business with them have been written off over time. If you stop
to analyze what maintaining and growing an existing customer
costs versus the time and expense associated with landing new
customers, you will see that existing customers are the profit
foundation of your business. Remember that gaining new
customers takes time, and time is money!
Action – Make sure your sales team is focused on expanding
business with existing customers and strengthening the
relationship with them over time.

Profit Growth Decision
Matrix…
 Sales leaders must make decisions that affect profit everyday. There are
key actions sales leaders can take to grow profits. The actions fall into
two basic categories, actions to grow revenues and actions to reduce
costs.
 Actions to grow revenues include…
• Change product mix and customer mix
• Change prices across the board
• Sell new products to existing and new customers
• Sell existing products to existing and new customers
 Actions to reduce costs include…
• Change in product mix (SKU rationalization)
• Raw materials (supplier rationalization)
• Change labor costs
• Change manufacturing overhead costs
• Change people, offices, operating expenses, and department costs
Action – Make sure your sales team has a clear picture of how they
impact profits by implementing revenue growth and cost
reduction activities. Your sales team must know how their
products and services affect these profit variables for their
customers. Sales people who relate with customers on these
financial terms differentiate themselves from the competition.

Profit Focus…The Life
Blood of Business
 Businesses exist to make profits. Sales professionals need to know how
their customers make profits, and most importantly, how their own
company makes profit.
 At Coca-Cola we used a simple profit formula to illustrate how profit is
generated. The formula is:
Profit = Volume X (Price – Cost)
 This formula can be used to show how each formula variable can impact
profit and how what you sell to customers can help them grow volume,
attain better selling price, or reduce costs, or all three!
Action – Make sure your sales team is grounded in the use and articulation of
the above profit formula. Additionally, provide your sales team with simple
profit models to review their customer offerings to ensure the right level of
profitability for your company and the customer’s company. Use these
profit models to demonstrate to the customer how using your products and
services impacts their profit!

Profit is Key, but Cash
Flow is King
 You can show profitability as a business, but go bankrupt if your
business does not convert its receivables and inventories to cash.
Cash flow is the single most important factor in the life of a
business.
 The sales force directly impacts operational cash flow in three
key ways:
• Acquiring customers with good credit ratings who pay their invoices
on time.
• Managing existing customers who fall behind on their invoices.
• Selling existing product inventories, at profitable prices, increasing
your company inventory turns.
Action – Make sure you measure sales activities that generate
operational cash flow. What gets measured gets done. You
cannot afford to have negative operational cash flow.

Product Positioning, Identifying
the Unique Value of Your Products
and Services Offering
 Sales and marketing must work together to identify the unique value
your products and services bring to your customers. This value is what
differentiates your product and service offerings from the competition.
The more value your products and services bring to your customers, the
more a customer is willing to pay. This value will serve as a barrier to
keep your competitors from taking your business. The more value you
deliver, the better.
 If your products and services have little or no value, you will be perceived
as a commodity and gain less price realization.
 In the game of sales, you are either selling value or price. Value will
always be the winner in both gaining profit margin and retaining
customers.
Action – Make sure your selling materials and training curriculum
focus on your unique product and service value and make this the
selling religion of your sales force.

Value Examples…
 The following are examples of “value-added” resources
that will differentiate your company from the competition.
Even if the competition has these resources, if your
company has better resources, you will be recognized as
the leader.
• Merchandising materials
• Marketing programs
• Operating data / insights
• Industry data / insights
• Consumer data / insights
• Promotional properties
• Innovation partnerships between your company and the
customer
• Top-to-top relationships between your company and the
customer.
Action – Create value for your customers each and every day. If you
do not, you can bet your bonus your competition will!

The Market Place –
Customer Classification
 Customers come is all sizes and levels of complexity. Each customer has a
different potential to grow and to decline. Customers differ in the types of
partnerships they want with their suppliers: some keeping the relationship very
transactional and others looking for more of a strategic relationship and forming an
alliance with their suppliers.
 At Coca-Cola we had eight different classifications of customers. We assigned
different resources to each customer type to best exceed customer expectations
and grow our businesses together. Some of the classification variables we used
were…
• Customer Innovation
• Customer Growth / Decline
• Revenue Per Outlet
• Selling Price Point
• Geography
• Account Management Needs
Action - Take the time to classify your customer base and figure out what type
of customers you want to focus on to grow and how to allocate your people
to meet and exceed customer needs.

Customer Classification…
Sweet Spot and Drain Accounts
 The two most important customer classifications to analyze and
identify are your Sweet Spot customers and Drain customers.
 Sweet Spot customers are those customers who provide your
company with the optimum level of revenue versus the cost to
service the account.
 Drain customers are those who generate losses for your
company because the revenue stream does not cover the cost of
service.
Action - Both Sweet Spot and Drain customers need to be identified. Sweet
Spot customers need to be maintained. Your hunting targets need to be
mostly Sweet Spot type businesses. Your sales team needs to change the
dynamics with Drain customers in order to make a profit or discontinue
doing business with them altogether. It is easy to overlook the Drain
realities of large sized customers because the size of the order. Do not fall
into this trap!

Customer Relationships
 Generally customer relationships fall into three categories. In their book
titled Rethinking The Sales Force, Rackham and DeVincentis describe the
three types of customer selling as:
• Transactional Selling. Fewer resources are needed because customers don’t value or
want to pay for the sales effort.
• Consultative Selling. This type of selling creates new value through the ability of the
sales force to advise, customize, and bring expertise beyond product.
• Enterprise Selling. Both the supplier and customer make major investment to
redesign their relationship into a powerful collaboration for creating a high level of new
value.
Action - Know which customers fall into these categories and apply
the right resources to take the selling relationship to the highest
level possible. Remember, if you are not doing this, your
competition will.

The “A-R-C”
Relationship Dynamic
 There is a dynamic to successful relationships that I have found to be tried and true. It is called
the “A-R-C” triangle. The A-R-C triangle is called a triangle because it has three related points.
The first of these points is affinity. The second of these points is reality. The third of these points
and the most important is communication.
 These three factors are related. Affinity means emotional response, the feeling of affection or lack
of it, of emotion or mis-emotion connected to life. Reality means the solid objects, the real things
of life. Communication means an interchange of ideas between two people.
 Without affinity there is no reality or communication. Without reality there is no affinity or
communication. Without communication there is neither affinity or reality. All three are
interrelated.
 To make a relationship work successfully, you must have all three dynamics in place and working
between you and the other person. In a simple example A-R-C works like this: You must like,
appreciate, and/or respect the other person, see realities in the same way within the relationship
that brings you together (marriage, family, friends, work, etc.), and be able to communicate with
each other with full understanding. If you can make these three things happen on an ongoing
basis you will have a successful relationship. Think about the relationships you had that have
fallen apart. One of these elements first failed causing the other two to eventually fade away
resulting in a failed relationship.
Action – Strive to create all three elements (A-R-C) of the triangle in your
relationships, especially the important ones: spouse, family, friends,
manager, customers etc.

Hunting…The Art
of Cold Calling
 The art of cold calling is the essence of sales. How do you
connect with a target customer with no prior relationship in
place? The answer lies in the power of A-R-C!
 The key is to connect in the three A-R-C relationship zones. Here
are some examples:
• Affinity – Show that you care for their business and personal
success. Let them know you are interested in helping them make
more profit or improving a situation in their business.
• Reality – Show them you look at their business the same way they
do, that you fully understand their business, that you want to help
them grow and improve their business the way they want.
• Communication – Communicate in a professional way that makes
your point. Live communication is always first choice. Make sure you
listen 80% of the time. Listening builds affinity and trust and insures
you know what’s important to your audience (their reality).
Action - Study “Conceptual Selling” from Miller Heiman; this selling technique
focuses on the above A-R-C elements within the framework of a sales call.

Getting Face-To-Face with a
Target Customer
 There are three types of cold calling that a sales professional must master.
1. On the spot (face-to-face) cold calling
2. Over the phone cold calling
3. Using an anchor letter and following up on the letter over the phone.
 The objective is to get a face-to-face meeting with the target customer.
 The best type of cold call is not cold but warm, that is, a call that is arranged or
endorsed by someone who recommends both parties (your company and the
customer) to each other.
Action - Always ask existing customers for recommendations and
introductions to potential new customers! Always set up a
face-to-face meeting to discuss your business proposal. Master
all types of cold calling. What you say in the first 10 seconds of
a cold call will determine if the customer will continue to listen
to you.

Using the Anchor Letter
 Cold calling senior managers in large companies requires smart
tactics. One of the most effective ways I have used for getting in
front of the right buyer comes from a book by Michael Boylan
called The Power To Get In. The technique outlined in this book
calls for sending letters to a related group of managers (three
usually works best) within an organization asking for an
appointment. The concept is that these managers, knowing that
other managers both senior and junior to them received the
same letter with the names of the other managers included in
the letters, will follow-up with you in a more responsible way.
This tactic will surface the right buyer to get a face-to-face
meeting sooner than later.
Action – Go buy the book The Power To Get In and have your
sales force start to practice sending anchor letters to
target customers. You will be amazed at the number of
face-to-face appointments you get.

It’s a Numbers Game
 One of the most important realities of sales is that it is a
numbers game. The most successful sales people are those who
set daily goals for cold calling and work their sales funnels
diligently. The more sales calls you make, the more sales you
experience!
 To help my sales team put their work into perspective, I
constantly remind them that in the game of sales, the worst that
can happen is somebody says “No.” The great news about
somebody saying no is that it is an invitation to the sales person
to continue to learn more about the customer and their needs to
eventually turn the “No” into a “Yes.”
Action – Figure out how many cold calls you need to do each day in
order to hit a specific number of new sales. In all the selling
endeavors I have been involved in, the average close ratio is one
out of ten cold calls turns into a sale (10%). Your close ratio
could be higher or lower. Just make sure you plan accordingly.

Building Your Sales Team Culture…
People Work for
People!
 One of the most critical tasks a sales leader will face is
building the culture of the sales team. Part of the culture
will come from the company that employs the sales team,
but the rest will come from the sales leader. The most
important concept to keep in mind is that people work to
work with people, preferably people they respect and have
something in common with. People also work to satisfy
their career goals and make money (and many other
reasons), but the most important part of work is the
people.
Action - A sales leader must create an
environment that nourishes people to be
successful at selling.

Building a Nourishing
Culture
 The following are some actions that a sales leader can
take to create a nourishing team culture:
• Let every sales person know that sales leadership’s role is
to support the sales team and to make them successful.
The more they sell, the better the company performs!
• Be open with all team members. Celebrate successes and
openly learn from mistakes. Let your team know that
honest mistakes will be tolerated and used to help the
whole team learn and do better.
• Be very clear on all performance expectations. Continue
to employ sales professionals that are better than
average, and remove those that are average or below.
People are usually relieved to change jobs when they are
not performing well. Again make the criteria for success
clear and easy to understand.

Change is Inevitable
and Constant!
 We all know that change is constant in all areas of life. Nothing stays the
same. This includes all aspects of your sales team, product and service
offering, competition and customers.
 In his book The Age of Paradox, Charles Handy discusses life cycles and
the Sigmoid Curve. The Sigmoid Curve illustrates that all things have life
cycles that start out with great energy, focus and growth, but over time,
start to wane and fall off and eventually end. Everything in the universe
is subject to this curve. The Sigmoid Curve certainly applies to all
business activities. The learning is that before you start the downward
trend (“Y”), you need to come up with the next activity or change. This is
best implemented at the “X” point of the curve (see above).
Action - Look at all business activities and assess where the activity
is on its growth curve. Make changes at the X location on the
curve before you hit the apex.

Summary…”ABC”
 ABC = “Always Be Changing.” To keep your sales team
fresh and effective you must constantly review the
fundamentals of the sales team to insure they are relevant
and effective. Always ask the question “Is this still
working?” If something needs to be changed, you must
change it. Always err on the side of change. Positive
change will ensure that your sales team has the best odds
of winning in today’s very competitive marketplace!
Thank you for reading this document. Please pass it on to
someone you feel would benefit from this information.
(Please note: the fundamentals addressed in this document are condensed to keep this
document short and simple. A deeper review of each fundamental is
recommended.)

Building a Cutting Edge Sales Team

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