5 Things to Expect from a Fractional Sales Consultant

If you’re like most small businesses, running your sales department can be a constant battle. Oftentimes, the business owner, or another member of the leadership team, is managing sales as only a part of their responsibilities. More times than not, this person is too consumed with running other areas of the business to give sales the full attention it deserves. The role of a Sales Manager is likely needed, but perhaps you don’t have a large enough team to justify a full-time hire.

The solution? Hire a fractional sales consultant to lead you in the right direction. Instead of investing in a full-time salaried employee, only pay for the time needed to get your sales department back on its feet. Below outlines exactly what you can expect with a fractional sales consultant.

1. Evaluation of your sales people

The first initiative a fractional sales consultant will take on is a thorough evaluation of the current sales team. This method likely includes reviewing interactions with prospects and current customers to assess selling skills, organization, motivation, and overall selling strategy.

This will be used as base-line information to help guide where to start with making improvements. It will also allow the consultant to start providing valuable improvement feedback to individual team members right away.

2. Skill development

It’s not the role of your fractional sales consultant to develop the team’s technical knowledge, however they will provide valuable insight on selling skill development. In fact, they should be laser-focused on it. These coaching opportunities will likely come as a result of the initial sales evaluation, through shadowing and after an overall understanding of your sales process. Both individual and team training sessions should be a part of what to expect from a fractional sales consultant.

3. Process development

It’s likely you already have a sales process in place; something that’s unique to your business and outlines how you’re interacting with prospective and current customers to close deals. But is it perfect? Probably not. The sales process should always be evolving with your changing environment and audience base; the sales consultant will have an outside perspective on how to improve it. This includes:

• How leads are generated and nurtured through the sales funnel
• When, how, and by whom a prospective is contacted
• The sequence of a sales meeting
• Supporting marketing materials needed
• Administrative support needed

Your fractional sales consultant will invest a good amount of time analyzing your current process and delivering improvements to achieve sales goals.

4. Data and reports

Without hard numbers, you are managing subjective thoughts and ideas. The right data allows you to analyze true facts and focus on measurable improvements. However, data can be overwhelming and it’s easy to get caught up in the wrong information. You want to be sure you are focusing on data that is truly affecting your sales. This can include reports such as:

• Performance on sales lead behavior
• Pipeline management
• Sales performance

Measuring and reporting on the right data for your company is something you should get from your fractional sales consultant.

5. Execution and discipline

Great sales people are independent and have their own personal selling style. For those reasons, you don’t want to enforce full behavior control, but you should instill a degree of discipline into the environment that helps align the sales team together and provides a cohesive brand experience for clients. A fractional sales consultant can help by instilling:

• Weekly team meetings with a consistent agenda
• Weekly one-on-one meetings that focus on performance management
• Timely feedback discussions for constructive coaching and recognition of great performance

Imagine if you could pick up the phone and hire a Sales Manager anytime your team needed one. With a fractional sales consultant you can! Fractional sales consultants can start immediately, will roll up their sleeves, and immerse themselves in your company.

To start the discussion, contact The Sales Group at donna.gliha@salesgroup-global.com