Yes, companies that grow revenues year after year do things differently than the more than 80% of all businesses that can’t. There are simple steps to change behaviors that drive poor results, so why aren’t more businesses doing what is necessary to achieve sales growth?

The secret is, growing companies all follow a similar path of developing their most important assets to penetrate and expand market share, improve team performance, and make the necessary changes to grow.

My keynote presentation, The Secrets to Sales Growth, on 1/11/11 will illustrate what start-ups and mature companies have done differently to beat the overwhelming odds to achieve profitability and/or get acquired, and what they are doing now to increase revenues in 2011.

Attendees will learn why the vast majority of companies fail to overcome the obstacles to market penetration.

See how a medical technology company achieved exponential growth this year (150% of last year’s revenue). See how a pharmaceutical products company was created, achieved profitability, and was acquired in just three years. They followed key elements of the same path to sales growth.

More successful case histories will be revealed. Attendees will learn the secrets and take away valuable how to information by completing their individual Cycle of Success Factors worksheet during this interactive presentation.

Please join us on 1/11/11 at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Venture Forum starting at 6:00pm.

Our new national health care technology client is currently filling several positions for the challenging role of inside sales person who also provides customer support. Located just outside of Boston, they are seeking ideal candidates right now.

This position requires proven track record selling services over the telephone, working knowledge of PCs, and proficiency in using the Internet. Successful candidates will identify customer issues that are impacting value and support these clients in getting the issues resolved.

This sales and customer support role involves working with the customer support group to help grow new client base and provide telephone training and on-going customer support.

To be considered now, forward resumes to editor@getbettersales.com. Because final candidates will be required to complete our assessment, you can leap frog the competition by completing the questionnaire here.

Because the graphic designer who put together the old GBS logo was not available to enhance our brand identity, I posted an ad on Craig’s List. I was implicit in stating that this was an initial project from which I would build a long-term relationship with the right person who most closely ‘fit’ my expectations.

The variety of responses was intriguing. Everything from professionally designed resumes to formal boiler plate responses, to generic RFPs, complete with links to online samples, to some who only replied with a cryptic text E-mail message.

I took the five strongest proposals and invited each designer to complete the Talent Analytics questionnaire. Their familiarity with these important new service offerings would both help them create a truer identity for Get Better Sales, and give each of us comprehensive guides to manage our mutual expectations, as I would share mine with him/her.

Incredibly, three of the final five did not have creativity as one of their top three hidden ambitions. That suggests each of them are working in a field that is not a good fit for how they naturally align themselves with success. The two strongest remaining applicants had almost identical natural styles and hidden ambitions. The final decision was easy: our new designer showed almost a complete absence of modifications. (I’m not sure anyone in the world has a complete absence of modifications.)

This illustration shows how he modified by just -2 in three of the four different categories, and by just +1 in the other. His work as a designer was such a wonderful fit with his natural styles, it would be very difficult for him to find any other line of work that was more rewarding.

Perfect Fit

Who on your team has the performance styles that naturally fit the expectations of their current role? What changes might you make that could make them more productive and easier to manage?

Learn how you can easily reset expectations to increase team performance now by taking our powerful employee engagement tool for a free test drive here…

People who ‘love their job’ do so because their natural behavior styles fit neatly within their job requirements. They are positive contributors to their team and more easily meet their manager’s expectations; they are energized through their work.

Hiring and promoting the right people is a critical success step for every business hoping to survive and/or thrive through this economic cycle. Not only should a person be the right fit for the job; the job should be the right fit for the person. Employees who need to change their natural styles to perform their duties are rarely able hide stress levels that result in weaker performance.

I have been able to help different clients align their talent strategy with their business strategy throughout the process of achieving the Strategic Talent Advisor certification as a business partner with Talent Analytics.  Clients have used these powerful tools to make stronger hires and promotions through the ’spot on’ accuracy of these tools. The comprehensive results serve as a how-to guide to resetting mutual expectations that leads to stronger performance and greater job satisfaction.

Now managers can make immediate changes by either providing necessary support or reassigning people to a different position that is a more natural ‘fit’. The closer the job fit to the natural styles, the happier the employee, the more productive the team, the more profitable the company.

Mr. Jake Jacobs, Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for ABnote North America wrote last month, “To a person these discussions were most positive and gave everyone great insight into each of our styles and ambitions and why we do the things we do…I can tell you that in my 25 years of sales management I have never known my staff and their potential better and understand what gets them motivated for the cause.”to manage?

It is a tough climate today for many businesses in many industries. But, when asked this week how his sales team was doing, Bob Martellio, VP Sales for Northeast Copier Systems, (NCS) reported, “We are at 117% of this year’s sales plan in total team production, despite this economy and longer sales cycles.”

Even though the office equipment industry is very competitive with rivals undercutting prices every day, NCS is one of the few businesses today reporting strong growth. Asked to explain he said, “We know exactly who fits well into our system. We rely on the same system we put into place several years ago, and September was our best month EVER!”

Last year they didn’t have the right mix. They ‘took a chance’ on a couple candidates they thought would be successful, but didn’t work out in the end. “They just didn’t fit in.”

“We also realize that there is not one system that fits all companies”, he continued. “We’ve made ours our own, and made changes when we’ve needed.” When asked to boil it all down to the most important reason for this year’s growth, he said,” We invest in our people.”

How do you know you have the right people in the right roles today? Without a clear understanding of the right person to fit into the organization, sales managers and business owners take chances every day when hiring new candidates and managing existing sales people.

Kevin Shea, National Sales Manager for W.J. Deutsch & Sons is, ”Having our best year yet!”  We know who we need on our team, so it’s so important to find the right fit. I work them all pretty hard but they know exactly what is expected of them, and I help them get there. He explained, “Every one is helping each other because we need to work together to achieve our goals and outperform the competition.”

Instead of ‘hoping for the best’ , using a comprehensive assessment provides a coaching guide to be explained and shared between management and the employee. It creates a brand new dynamic that increases productivity and personal fulfillment which drives higher retention.

Sales can’t grow without a cohesive team who are motivated and supported to grow as individuals. Sustained growth is elusive these days for many businesses, and it REALLY is all about your people. And, when they’re all pulling in the same direction, every one wins.

Auditing your current sales team is the best and fastest way to understand how to get better sales with your current people. Discover how coach them to better performance by tapping into their the natural styles and see how their individual ambitions their actions. Experience the accuracy and quality of our comprehensive free assessment here.

I will be sharing many of the tools Bob has used to achieve consistent growth over many years in my next workshop, “Making Sales People More Productive in 90 Days or Less,” which takes place on December 4th. Click here for an explanation of the best practices all attendees will receive as part of the Sales Management’s Best Friend Starter Kit in this hands-on workshop.