4 Tips to get to Early Wins for New Sales Hires

My career has been spent working for B2B SME’s (small-medium sized enterprises) that have been under resourced and seeking overseas sales growth.  In the seminal work by Steven Watkins, The First 90 Days, one of the strategies after landing in a new job is to build small wins.  I buy into that concept for new salespeople because positive results stimulate more positive activity and a winning attitude renews itself past the probationary period.
 
It is hard to start in a new sales role, learning new product, new sales process and new teammates so lighter lifting may be efficient to make a 90 day impact.   Seek customers in their comfort zone.  Wholly new customer relationships need to be cultivated but are hard to win in the first 90 days particularly if you have a sales cycle that exceeds that short time. An existing customer base that has proven it likes the product, has been set up in the sales system and is receptive to an appointment is a great alternative and a great initiation.
 
Do some simple analytical work.  Perform your A/B/C analysis of existing accounts.  Segregate your B accounts and high C accounts:

1. Chances are the previous rep lost their mojo over the past 5-6 months and did not vet these contacts for new opportunities.They may be sitting at the lower reaches of your pipeline. Eager new minds can be less critical of these undersold opportunities and have enough attention to generate.PS check product returns too for potential conflicts that may have been avoided.
   
2. Smaller customers, or a customer of just one part of the business for a long time may be ripe for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities with complementary products with a ‘fresh pair of eyes’?They also may not be aware of products introduced in the past 12 months.
   
3. Look at the CRM characteristics at these accounts.Have there been any customer organizational changes at these accounts?Don’t just look at buyers but contact the product or engineering managers.Is there a new VP or Director that could be making other organizational changes?Typically, new contacts like to be in contact with other new contacts so they can build their own relationships and not inherit a seller legacy. It is a fresh start for both.Not right yet but after awhile these new contacts can also provide a new referral network within 6-12 months if you win some new projects so keep this in mind as you build your 18-24 month onboarding process.
   
4. Review custom product applications for these accounts for the past two years.If they are currently buying a custom product application are there others in play that have not surfaced?If the custom project never turned into a revenue opportunity could it be won with a standard or modified product?
   

 
Channel partner relationships are critical too if that is a path to market.  Analyze and then hit the road. Go through the same A/B/C exercise for channel partners adding market position to the factors, and ask yourself:

1. Is the ownership team committed to growing your business?
   
2. Is the subject matter expert for your line or product champion the leader you’d want in charge?
   
3. Has the distributor team analyzed their customer base like you would have done for their direct accounts?
   

See https://www.jimthomasintl.com/blog/working-thru-channel-partner-issues for more channel evaluation tools.

As I learned early from one of my Tradewinds colleagues about the spotlight- “first you see the light then you feel the heat” when starting a new role. The metric with additional resources comes with the top management expectation of increased revenue, project wins and expanded sales/customer.
 
There are other tools to use to accelerate the new salesperson investment to break even above expectations, but winning new revenue is a direct path to success. 

Do you want to have a free fifteen-minute call to discuss successful onboarding new rep sales tactics?  Sign up on my web site or contact me directly by phone.  This will be the subject at the late May Tradewinds meetings https://www.jimthomasintl.com/the-tradewinds-councilcopy.html.


Good Selling!