It's easy to understand why salespeople have become discouraged in this down economy. Sales managers and small business owners tell us that sales to current customers have declined by 25% or more in 2009. New and current customers want special deals and concessions, or else the customer will go somewhere else.

Overcoming Negativity
To overcome a lot of this negativity, sales managers must spend more time on motivating their sales force. What can you do to motivate your sales force today?  In this down economy, two motivators from managers are especially valuable. First, since salespeople are results-oriented, anything that a manager can do to help his or her salesperson to win a sale, will be a motivator.  Second, job security and reassurance that the seller's job is safe, is a big motivator during rising unemployment.

STAR was recently interviewed by Newsday (Aug. 24, 2009) for a feature business article that claims that "...keeping a sales team motivated these days can be a full-time job".  Click on Keeping a Sales Team, well, Sailing to read comments from Bill McCormick, as well as additional tips from other experts in the field.

What Do You Think
We'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas on keeping a sales team motivated.

Studies show that average companies tend to lose 50% of their customers within 5 years? We call this customer churn, for short.  By contrast, the best companies do a much better job at customer retention.
 
Do you know how well your company currently does at customer retention? If not, make this your first action. You should gather data in two areas. First, what is the overall level of customer retention and customer attrition?  If you don’t know this information, how can you assess if you are improving?

Second, to what extent do these metrics vary by individual salesperson and/or customer support personnel? The latter data will allow you to identify the employees who are naturally doing a good job at customer retention. You can use them to develop a list of best practices that everyone should follow. 

What Do You Think?
STAR can provide coaching and consultation on how you can gather data on your customer churn and what you should be doing with this type of information.