Your Sales Team
Most companies readily institute a comprehensive financial audit to ensure strict adherence to company policy, as well as to provide a deep system of stringent fiscal accountability. An uncompromising commitment to this practice strengthens shareholder confidence by creating an environment of suitable integrity. In the same spirit of insisting on accountability and integrity, why not audit your sales team? Your sales team is the cornerstone of your business. It represents the front line for communicating your offerings and value propositions to your prospect and customer base. It is an undeniable fact that sales representatives can easily make or break the opinion of your company in the competitive marketplace. The sales process is fragile. Relying on human execution, the potential for error is great. How does your sales team operate? What do they say? You have revenue figures, but do you really know the content of the message that they carry? More than likely they have undergone extensive training, but are they utilizing the proper techniques to advance and close deals? Even if your company is prosperous, it is possible that there is a large gap between the perceived success of your sales team members, and the reality of their missed potential.

What is a Sales-Audit?
Similar to a financial audit, a Sales-Audit^SM provides an across-the-board assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses for both individual sales professionals and entire sales teams. A Sales-Audit^SM helps companies identify both positive and negative trends. The results deliver powerful information that assist with customizing future sales training efforts by targeting critical areas. Your management team will be presented performance in the form of quantitative and qualitative results.

An un-audited sales team results in:

• Unmet sales objectives
• Loss of client opportunities due to ineffective technique
• Confused customer base due to non-uniform messaging
• Missed revenue targets due to poor execution

A Sales-Audit^SMprovides a weighted, quantitative scorecard analyzing each sales representative's relative performance regarding pivotal sales technique metrics. Additionally, a summary weighted scorecard is provided to illustrate trends and effectiveness for the entire sales team.

How do your customers and prospects perceive your sales teams?
Marketing executives routinely 'listen in' on customer service representatives' calls with customers. It is an accepted practice that produces powerful knowledge. Imagine the power of knowing what your sales professionals are really saying to your clients and prospects? By conducting a Sales-Audit, you'll get detailed answers to the following questions:

• Is your sales team communicating the correct message?
• Do your sales professionals convey products and services effectively?
• Do they employ professionalism regarding basic actions like rapid follow-up or probing for a deeper understanding of your prospect's pain points? Are they adequately articulating the vision of your company and its solutions?
• Is your sales team capable of engaging prospects in intelligent, requisite dialog that naturally leads to properly defined next steps?
• Do they speak in terms of benefits or features?
• Are their presentations overly technology-driven and potentially unintelligible to the laymen?
• How does your sales team perform in the critical area of prospect development?
• How do they compare against sales representatives from your competitors?

A Sales-Audit^SMwill bring resolution to these unsolved mysteries.

How is the Sales-Audit^SM Scorecard organized?
The scorecard is presented in three formats:

• Sales Member Scorecard - each sales professional audited is presented with a scorecard reflecting his/her individual audit
• Sales Team Scorecard - a trend analysis documenting collective performance for the team
• Competitive Analysis Scorecard - documented results from your sales team's audit evaluated alongside your selected competitors' audit

Each scorecard is fully customizable and organized into the following nine sections:

1. Core Message Presentation: This section examines the accuracy and clarity of the presentation of your corporate history, company philosophy, and core competencies as expressed by your sales team. Errors in fundamental messaging skills can be fatal to any selling process and must be corrected immediately.
2. Essential Communication: A thorough examination of necessary communications skills is conducted for each member of your sales team. As an example, research indicates that vocal tone boosts communication effectiveness by 80%. Sales teams who have not mastered vocal intonation skills are regarded as poor communicators.
3. Competitive Intelligence: Do your sales professionals probe to determine which of your competitors are contending for the business? Do they accurately evaluate the stage of competitor involvement? Failure to thoroughly understand a possible competitive stronghold can mean for a tremendous waste of valuable company time and resources.
4. Qualifying Inquiry: This section analyzes appropriate qualifying skills. Does your sales team qualify appropriately? Studies show that top sales producers win, as the result of having mastered superior qualification techniques.
5. Product Knowledge: A complete examination of product knowledge and product messaging is conducted. Do members of your sales team thoroughly understand the prospect's challenges? Do they recommend appropriate solutions? Failure to do so can result in prospects that do not put confidence in your company.
6. Use of Persuasive Resources: Do your sales professionals leverage helpful, persuasive resources? Example: Guiding the prospect to your homepage and performing a simple demonstration could ignite interest and accelerate next step action items. A lack of resourcefulness may undermine credibility.
7. Closing: Closing a deal is a natural step in a cycle that is comprised of a series of closes. Do your sales team members understand that every meeting should conclude with some type of close? Example: A "next step" roadmap should be identified at the close of every juncture. Each meeting is simply a fulfillment of previously agreed-upon objectives that graduate to the next step.
8. Professionalism: This section answers basic questions about each sales professional: Do your sales professionals exhibit professional behavior? Are they helpful and courteous? Do they exude confidence and motivate prospects to conduct business with your firm?
9. Subjective commentary: A value-added section in which the analyst has the ability to express findings in paragraph format that might not be reflected in the audit data.

How is the data tabulated?
After conducting each audit, your analyst completes individual scorecards and ultimately calculates the entire group's performance, which highlights trends. Your analyst will additionally gather competitive data to provide an assessment of your team's performance compared against your selected peer and competitor group. For each sales team member, the Sales-Audit^SM results will reveal strengths and weaknesses by category.

What are weighted values?
Scores are carefully determined by using The Blaire Group's Sales-Audit^SMWeighted Value System for factors that you deem most important. Fully customizable weights are multipliers that provide scoring intended to mirror your corporate priorities. For example, weights of 10, 20, and 30 can be selected based on the following criteria:
10 = Significant
20 = Vital
30 = Critical

What does the scale mean?
When evaluating your sales team, performance will be ranked by the following guidelines:
0 = Failed execution, no attempt made
1 = Made attempt, but not convincing
2 = Demonstrated competence
3 = Excellent, perfect execution

Summary Evaluation
When the percentiles have been formulated and the sales team has been ranked, your analyst will evaluate both individual and overall team performances. Your management team will be presented performance in the form of quantitative and qualitative results. The Blaire Group shares your high standards. Our percentile rankings are as follows:
90 to 100 Percentile - Exceeds expectations
80 to 90 Percentile - Meets expectations
Below 80 Percentile - Fails to meet expectations

Partner Sales-Audit^SM