How to hit your sales target in no time.

“Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.” – Brian Tracy

One of my leader clients who works in a Non-Governmental Organization came to me with his coaching topic: “How can I raise my staff headcount to 70 by the end of the year?” He told me that his current staff headcount ranges around 40-50 people. And the staff turnover rate is considerably high, about 60%-70% due to the nature of the work.

His organization’s only income is directly received via fund raising from the general donors who see and appreciate the values that his organization brings to the people in need.

So, we began our coaching conversation by exploring into his story and the reasons why he brought this topic into our coaching conversation.

One of my “Aha moment” questions to him was that… “What causes the staff turnover rate to be that high?”

He replied, “The fluctuating income of the staff.” He added, “The staff’s income come solely from 100% commission, no salary at all.”

I gently reflected, “That’s why the staff keep leaving the organization. Because there’s no stable income.”

He responded, “That’s exactly right! That’s the main cause of the turnover.”

I’d known that my leader client’s background was an engineer. So, I introduced an analogy of engineering process to him. I shared with him that… there’s an Input, Process and Output. So, I asked him, “With this familiar analogy, what could you possibly do to solve this high turnover rate issue?”

He said, “For the Input Step, I would need to look into our recruitment process and discuss with our recruitment team about what could be improved specifically. For the Process Step, I’m still not sure what could be improved for our current situation. For the Output Step, I think we need to conduct the exit-interview asking for feedback from the staff who are leaving.”

“Wow! Regarding the Input and Output Steps, I think you’ve come up with some good ideas.” I immediately acknowledged him.

“For your current situation, I’d love to know about your Super-salespeople or I usually call them, ‘Super-man’. How many ‘Super-man’ have you currently got in your organization?” I added.

He replied, “We’ve got about 10 ‘Super-man’ out of those 40-50 staff.”

I reflected, “That’s great! And what do you plan to do with those 10 ‘Super-man’ staff in order to fully maximize their potential and to help with this turnover issue?”

My leader client paused for a long while and responded, “I could ask them to be mentors for the rest of the staff. Ask them to share their best-practice strategies, lessons learned, attitude, mindset, skillset, experiences and self-motivation with other staff. So, other staff can learn about these from them. Then, I will also set up a mentor-mentee work system in our organization.”

To make a long story short, my client and I came up with additional strategies and action steps from the rest of our coaching conversation. And at the end, I asked him to share his key insights with me.

His key insights are highlighted as follows:

1. The high staff turnover rate mainly came from fluctuating income of staff.
2. The fluctuating income came from fluctuating performance of staff.
3. It’s unnecessary to focus on raising the staff headcount to 70 as long as the current numbers of staff can hit or exceed the sales target—quality is more important quantity.
4. The best way to retain the staff is to keep them perform at their peak level.
5. When they perform at their peak level, their income will automatically mimic their peak performance.
6. Use those 10 ‘Super-man’ staff to be the role-models and mentors for peak performance for the rest of the staff.
7. Establish the mentor-mentee work culture in the organization.
8. Improve the recruitment process by focusing on recruiting the staff who have the ‘Super-man’ personal vital traits and characters to join the organization.
9. Conduct comprehensive exit-interview to gain key insights and feedback from the leaving staff.

Just two weeks after the first coaching session, we had a follow-up coaching session. This leader client shared the good news with me that… his organization didn’t only hit the sales target, but exceeded it by 300%!!! Wow! What a magic of coaching! His organization could exceed the sales target in no time!

So, I asked him what had contributed to this huge and quick success! He said, “The mentor-mentee work culture and those ‘Super-man’ as role models for the rest of the staff are the key success factors for this big and quick achievement.”

My own insight from the coaching session is that… “Any organization can hit the sales target in no time if your staff can model the excellence in your own organization.”

If you want to experience the magic of coaching like this client of mine did, you can get in touch with me via my homepage for a trial session: Home – The Best Coach International (thebest-coach-international.com)