Technology Council of Southern California Blog

By Charles J. Curto, Managing Principal of Tech Coast Equity Group.

At a meeting of the Technology Council’s Entrepreneur Society, Brad Leggett, CEO of the sales performance consulting firm The Leggett Group, presented Keys to Winning Sales Teams. Below are some of the key take-aways from his presentation.

• Brad advocates viewing the challenge of building and sustaining winning sales teams in terms of people, performance and processes.
• Select your team members carefully with special emphasis on
  • Defining the 3 to 5 key results that must be delivered,
  • Specifying the activities needed to achieve those deliverables
  • Determining the skills and background needed to achieve the desired results, and
  • Being sure the person has the right attitude.
• Keys to selecting new talent include
  • Recruiting is a process, not an event.
  • The recruiting rule of 3:
    • 3+ interviews
    • With 3+ team members
    • At 3 venues, a mix of work and non-work.
  • Focus on past results.
• Implement a 90-day quick-start program to launch the new team member on the path to success including
  • Phased acquisition of key knowledge and skills with someone designated to impart each.
  • 90-day goals with weekly achievements spelled out.
  • Weekly review progress versus goals.
  • Cut if not making it.
• The key to performance management is establishing responsibility by
  • Setting clear goals that are achievable, demanding, permit measuring and controlling results, and are collaborative while making clear who has responsibility for which deliverables.
  • Providing for support activities with their goals.
  • Providing weekly one-to-one feedback on progress versus goals.
• Processes and systems that provide the infrastructure for achieving sales goals include
  • Sales tools, such as collateral, web site and turning tribal knowledge to answer the question “Why your company?”.
  • Rewards and recognition, including compensation, public praise and contests.
  • Team meetings which provide collaborative training as well as solutions to challenges.
  • A collaborative CRM that facilitates the sales person’s goal achievement and delivers progress metrics to the sales person and management.

This summary is not meant to be a transcript of the session nor a comprehensive primmer on developing a high performance sales team. Instead, its intent is briefly to share a few of the valuable take-aways from the session, take-aways which are based on the experience of successful entrepreneurs and professionals who work with entrepreneurs. Hopefully, these will encourage you to attend future Council programs where you can meet and learn from the experience and wisdom of other thought-leaders.

Brad Leggett can be reached at (949) 388-6910 and Brad@LeggettSales.com.