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1-Page Summary of The Sales Acceleration Formula
Making Sales Scalable
Mark Roberge was an MIT-trained engineer who joined HubSpot, a start-up with only three employees. He developed a sales process that made the company $100 million in seven years.
He has a program that includes four parts: metrics, processes, tactics and specific components.
1. “The Sales-Hiring Formula”
To be excellent at hiring salespeople, develop a profile of the ideal candidate. Then, hire only people who match that profile. To increase the chance that those you do hire will succeed as salespeople, tailor your recruitment process to fit your firm’s needs. Set up an internal recruiting agency and give it incentives to find top candidates for jobs. Use this four-step process:
Today’s most successful salespeople are intelligent and like to help others. They also have a strong work ethic, coachability, curiosity, prior success and an entrepreneurial spirit. Look for these qualities in your applicants when you’re hiring.
“Ask each candidate behavioral questions” – Ask them how they would handle certain situations.
One of the best ways to hire salespeople is to create a scoring system based on their characteristics. Then, after you’ve hired several people, compare how well they do in the field with your initial scores from when you first interviewed them. You can also use LinkedIn to search for new talent who have similar characteristics as your top performers.
2. “The Sales-Training Formula”
Since salespeople are different, you need to train them differently. One strategy is shadowing a top performer for on-the-job training. However, this method may be ineffective for some people. A better approach is the three elements of sales training:
The buyer journey is the path a customer takes before making a purchase. Salespeople should help customers every step of the way in their journey.
“The qualifying matrix” is a tool that salespeople can use to determine if their offerings will benefit the prospect. For example, “budget, authority, need and timing” (BANT) is a popular qualifying matrix. In order to understand what prospects want and need on a daily basis, salespeople should participate in social media as much as possible.
3. “The Sales-Management Formula”
Salespeople should follow the same sales process, and their managers should hold them accountable for fulfilling it. The title “sales manager” has become outdated; “sales coach” is a more realistic title. Sales productivity and success are directly proportional to the amount of coaching that salespeople receive. Metrics drive effective coaching, which focuses on improving salespeople’s skill deficiencies.
Salespeople can be measured in several ways. Typically, they are judged by the number of leads that they generate, the number of worked leads (those who have visited their businesses), and the number of new customers recruited. The sales leaders should use these metrics to discover any skill deficits among their sales people and coach them to overcome those weaknesses. Sales leaders should also advise other sales managers to do this as well.
In order to have a good sales force, you need to promote from within. Promote people who are great at leadership and not management. Look for three things: performance in the field, sales skills, and potential for future success as a leader. Hire someone into a leadership role if they can hire one person on their own and manage them well over time.
Sales compensation plans are essential to effective sales management. Salespeople should understand the plan, and it should align with your firm’s goals. You can use contests to motivate salespeople, but you have to make sure they line up with the behaviors you want them to exhibit in order for those contests to be successful.
