In the past two years, Dallas-based Hardie’s Fresh Foods has transformed its teams into a high-performance sales culture. The results of this change have been phenomenal, yielding more than 20 percent year-over-year growth. There have been many changes made that have contributed to this culture shift, some of which are outlined below.
At the beginning of each month, we used to have a sales meeting to go over everyone’s sales from the previous month. The main question asked was, “Did you hit your numbers or not?” One of the first changes in our thinking was to challenge this process. Looking back at last week, last month or even last year is using a “lagging indicator” of performance, and is akin to driving down the highway while looking in your rearview mirror. This process was blown up and replaced with “leading indicators.”
How do you create leading indicators of future sales performance? Selling is a game of numbers. For example, a sales rep may talk to 20 prospective customers to get five follow-up meetings. Out of the five follow-up meetings, the rep gets one new customer. We learned future performance is driven by behavior. The actions consciously taken every day will lead to the results wanted tomorrow.
Hardie’s started by creating a daily/weekly goal sheet for each account manager. The goals include how many prospective customers a rep will call each week, how many existing customers they will meet with, how many customers will they ask for a referral, how many they will do new item presentations for, etc. The simple fact is, if you’ve been trained on the product and sales techniques and can build rapport, you will be successful in sales if you follow a daily behavior plan.
In the produce business, sales people are easily pulled off-task. By having a set of daily and weekly goals, they can deal with an issue and then get back on track.
Next, our sales managers began weekly coaching sessions with each team member to review the previous week’s goals. Did they accomplish the number of visits they committed to? If not, what will they do in the coming week to ensure they hit goals? It is important to note the number of visits, presentations, etc., is different for each sales rep. A person who is new and doesn’t have a lot of existing business will have more free time, so his/her new customer visits will be higher. On the other hand, a veteran sales person with a lot of existing business will have fewer prospect customer visits but more business reviews with existing customers, more new item presentations and more referrals asked for.
During the coaching sessions, the sales managers never tell the sales reps how they would have handled a customer meeting, but instead ask the reps how they think it could have been handled differently. This guides or coaches the person to better performance rather than telling them what to do.
In the produce business, sales people are easily pulled off-task. By having a set of daily and weekly goals, they can deal with an issue and then get back on track.
Hardie’s Fresh Foods implemented a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Each sales rep’s goals are included in their profile. As they visit customers, the rep can enter the visit in the system using a mobile app. During the coaching sessions, the sales manager has the information at his/her fingertips to review the sales representative’s progress.
The CRM program also offers additional coaching opportunities for the manager to use. If you have two reps making the same number of customer visits and one is getting twice as many follow-up meetings than the other, we can try to help the lower performer by finding out where he/she is falling short. The CRM program also allows others in the company to have visibility to the company’s customers, prospective customers, recent visits, any issues, etc. It is not a system for micromanaging a sales representative’s time but rather a repository for documenting customer touches.
We also created a sales process for our team to follow. Having a sales process is a foreign concept for many companies. We have processes for most operational functions, so why not for sales? The sales process outlines the steps necessary for a sales rep to contact customers, qualify them, initiate interest in what the company has to offer, find out any issues they are having with their current supplier and how to build and keep rapport with them. A good process outlines information that sales reps need to get from the prospect at each stage so they can be sure they are moving the prospect toward becoming a customer. The ability to see where they are in the sales process allows both the reps and sales managers to know where they stand with a prospective customer.
Lastly, we created a sales compensation plan that rewards reps for bringing in new “profitable” business and maintaining existing business. This plan is based on the profitability of the account and encourages the sales team to hunt new business that fits the company’s profitability model. The compensation plan, along with the weekly goals, CRM, sales process and coaching sessions give a sales rep the information and encouragement needed to help them achieve not only their company goals, but also to grow their income.
Greg Rowe is chief operating officer of Hardie’s Fresh Foods, Dallas. Rowe is also a former member of The United Fresh Produce Association’s wholesaler-distributor board.
