The action plan to properly supervise salespeople’s activities

rodolphe meynier Published by Rodolphe Meynier – 16 March 2023

Efficiency is defined as the ability to produce maximum results with minimum effort or expense. In sales, effort generally refers to the time spent to obtain the desired result. The efficient salesperson is therefore the one who is in front of the right customer, with the right intervention, done in the right way and in the right quantities. To achieve this, we rely on an action plan that optimizes the time spent with the customer and reduces time wasted. An effective action plan allows you to reach your sales objectives and to keep the right customers in the long term.

Through its mission to improve the sales capacity of companies and increase their profit margin, Celsius Halifax North America contributes to training and maintaining a proactive and motivated sales force. As a result, the effectiveness of salespeople is at the heart of our intervention priorities. Our vast experience with companies in various sectors of activity has allowed us to realize that a great deal of time is wasted by sales teams. The need to reduce these time losses to optimize sales performance is therefore obvious and the best way to remedy this situation is to adopt an action plan to properly manage their activities. These activities must be associated with objectives, which must be regularly monitored and measured.

Qualify customers

A good action plan starts with customer qualification, which allows us to find customers we want and who want us. This exercise consists of defining our ideal client by establishing his profile (who he is, his territory, his market segment, his size and his type of business), determining his development potential (which of our products and services interest him) and taking into account the previous relationship we had with him (what did he consume, what growth did he bring us, etc.).

This step, often done using models among the right customers, allows for a better understanding and prioritization of actions with current and future customers. From the qualifications, it is possible to set opportunistic objectives by directing the sales team towards certain types of customers to whom one can sell a lot, with a better profit margin.

The preparation of a qualification questionnaire allows us to identify the characteristics retained as being those of the ideal client in order to better recognize him. It is important to disqualify as soon as possible the clients who do not meet our expectations and objectives in order to concentrate on those who present the best potential, thus avoiding wasting time. Defining the CAB (characteristics, advantages, benefits) tells us a lot about the customer and allows us to target the benefits that are important to them, those that correspond to an issue they care about.

Understanding the customer

Questioning the customer is the main tool of the sale, the step where we discover who he really is. It allows you to qualify, but above all to sell better and more. But beyond the qualification questionnaire, we must also dare to broaden the spectrum of questions asked to go and play in other areas, always with the objective of properly identifying the customer. It is very interesting to explore these multiple facets: what motivates their search for a solution, what exactly are they looking for, what is their current situation, what are their tools, their methods, their mode of operation, what issues are they facing, who are they comparing us to, what are their other options?

Questioning is an art that you must learn to master to improve your sales performance. Using open or closed questions, knowing how to bounce back, making scenarios and practicing presenting an adapted and relevant value proposition are the duties of a good salesperson.

Presenting value

Satisfying the customer and building a lasting relationship requires presenting value. At the end of the questionnaire, it will then be possible to make a proposal adapted to their answers and profile. We are talking about moving from characteristics to benefits by targeting what interests the customer and highlighting what our proposal brings them. By this step, we create desire by presenting something that matters to him.

Follow-up of activities

For a salesperson, tracking their activities is even more important than tracking their results. It’s important to make sure they are doing enough and doing it well. Regular monitoring during the sales process gives the salesperson time to make adjustments when necessary. It is important to understand that the result is the consequence of the activities. Analyzing them allows you to see what needs to be improved.

A good action plan that guides salespeople’s activities promotes customer retention in the sales process, as the value proposition is much more relevant this way. It allows us to gain more service offers, to offer more products and services per proposal, to increase the profit margin and ultimately to reach our objective more easily.

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