I love to tell the story of my typical client. She builds a company on a real passion for the widget. She is so passionate and enthusiastic she brings down a few accounts and starts to grow.

The pressures of the business keep her inside in manufacturing, operations and management activities, all necessary but taking away from her sales activities. Ah! The Solution! Hire a sales person, “my widget practically sells itself!” So she reaches out to find a sales person.

A candidate is found, good resume, sold some stuff before, has a nice personality and a bonus, she likes him. The hire is completed, her new rep is sent to the factory floor for a few weeks to learn the ins and outs of widgets. The next step is to travel around meeting clients to learn why they buy this particular widget. Now it is time to show the rep to his new office to belly up to the phone, boot up and thumb through this year’s Austin Business Journal Book of Lists to research leads. As she leaves his office she will say (9 out of 10 times this happens!) “Go Get em’ Tiger!”

Fast forward 6 months later and well…. It’s surprising how many small and medium businesses (and startups) are guilty of this action plan–and the problem is that many business owners wonder why it didn’t work and then become concerned (rightfully) about the cost of training and salaries (there is no or little commission!) that they invest in unsuccessful sales hires.

The Fix? A PLAN– based on clear action steps, understanding your best clients/prospects, knowing that most reps quit at 3 calls and having a system to contact prospects 7-8 times (that’s when they buy), performance metrics that drive accountability, appropriate training and corrective action while systematically driving a series of prospects down a structured pipeline and as a result – booking business.

Motivating your sales force is a necessity–but what separates small businesses from larger businesses is a true sales plan, based on clear action steps, building a pipeline, and holding sales people accountable for either closing deals, or moving prospects out.

The good news is that building a sales plan is not difficult–but it does take management and persistence. It starts by asking the question, “Who are you calling, and why?” Once you’ve established the right types of prospects to call on, sales people should enter those names into some sort of pipeline where they rank the prospects based on predetermined criteria, ie an A is a prospect that we’ve gotten a proposal out to, a B is a prospect that we’ve had a discussion and determined a need, and C is a suspect that we haven’t talked to yet, but we think they may have problems that we can solve.

Bob Davis is the owner of Simple Sales Strategy in Austin, TX providing sales training and holding sales people accountable to a proven, systematic sales system. He can be reached at 512.658.9500 or rsdavis@simplesalesstrategy.com