Brainstorm for Sales Improvements

One of your key jobs as a sales manager is to release the full potential of each person that reports to you. As it happens, salespeople usually have an enormous reserve of potential that is seldom used and that can be released to increase sales results.

Brainstorming for sales improvements is a key job of the sales manager and one of the best ways to unleash the potential of your sales force. You should hold regular meetings with salespeople to brainstorm the solutions to specific problems facing the sales force, especially problems in dealing with difficult customers, changing competitive conditions, variations in demand for your products and services, and the daily difficulties that salespeople face that hold them back from achieving higher sales results.

Fortunately, as far back as 1945, some of the best thinkers in business have been working to perfect the process of brainstorming. They have come up with a series of rules and principles that you can use to get amazing results in short periods of time.

One of the most powerful ideas in business is the concept of “synergy.” What this means is that a group of people working together in complete harmony can produce vastly more results than the sum total of the individuals if they were each working alone. This applies to brainstorming as well.

Idea Generation

You should consider holding brainstorming sessions on a regular basis, perhaps once per week, whenever there is a problem or an obstacle that is holding back sales generation and sales results. The ideal time length for a brainstorming session is fifteen to forty-five minutes. When you organize such a session, you should start and stop on time, announcing exactly how long this session will be at the very beginning.

The brainstorming session should focus on a single question or problem that demands a practical answer, such as, “How can we increase our sales by 20 percent over the next ninety days?” Or, “How can we get more customers to buy faster than today?”

You can use brainstorming questions for each part of the sales process. For example, you could ask, “How can we find and set appointments with more qualified prospects than we are getting today?”
You can also ask, “What are three things that we could do in every initial meeting with a customer to build higher levels of rapport and trust?” The variety of questions you can ask is limited only by your imagination.

PROPER STRUCTURE

The best setup is a circular seating arrangement where everyone faces everyone else. When people can see, hear, and make eye contact with other people in a brainstorming session, they are more stimulated and motivated to contribute even more ideas.

The focus in each session is on the quantity of ideas rather than the quality of ideas. What experts in this field have found is that there is a direct relationship between the number of new ideas you generate and the likelihood that you will generate a great idea that can really make a difference in your business. Continually focus on generating as many ideas as possible by encouraging people to throw out every idea they can think of and put it on the table.

When I conduct brainstorming sessions for corporations, we always appoint two people in the session. The first is the leader. The job of the leader is to make sure that everyone around the table gets a chance to contribute their best ideas. People who may be a little bit more self-contained or shy about speaking up in front of others must especially be encouraged to give their best ideas. Often, the person who says very little is the one who comes up with the groundbreaking idea that changes the entire sales results of the business.

The second person is the recorder. This is the person whose primary job is to write down every idea as it is suggested, as quickly as possible. In some brainstorming sessions where there may be six or seven people at the table, you may require two or even three people to act as recorders to keep up with the many new ideas being generated.

FEWER PEOPLE, BETTER RESULT

The ideal number of people for a brainstorming session is five to seven. Less than five people diminishes the potential value of the brainstorming session, as well as the number of ideas. When you have more than seven people, not everyone gets a chance to make a full contribution to the session.

The key to successful brainstorming is to suspend judgment completely. No comments or criticisms are allowed, no matter how strange or crazy an idea might sound initially. Very often, combining one ridiculous idea with another ridiculous idea yields an absolutely brilliant idea that can really make a difference to results.
You should stop the brainstorming session at exactly the time that you had originally announced. The pressure of a deadline increases the number of good ideas.

Idea Evaluation

The brainstorming session is divided into two parts. Part one is idea generation (as described previously), and part two is idea evaluation.

Once you have generated a sufficient number of ideas and written down each of them, you can then evaluate them one by one. When I have conducted brainstorming sessions on a single question, with several tables of five to seven people, we will often collect the ideas from one table and pass them on to the next table for the evaluation part of the process. This way, no one evaluating the ideas from the other table has any ego investment in being right or wrong or having the ideas accepted or rejected.

In evaluating ideas, you go through them, discuss them, and select those ideas that seem to have the greatest possibilities for immediate application and improved results. There is a direct relationship between the amount of participation and discussion, on the one hand, and the amount of involvement and commitment to the company, on the other. The more people get a chance to contribute their very best thinking to improving the results of their jobs, the more loyal and motivated they will be, doing their jobs even better in the future.

Unlock Their Creative Potential

Brainstorming is one of the most powerful ways to motivate your staff members, to get them thinking creatively, and to keep them continually involved in helping you come up with even more solutions to do the job better.

Everyone has ideas. Over the years, I have taught brainstorming in organizations across the country. I have been astonished at the quality and quantity of the ideas that come from executive assistants, clerks, junior employees, and others who may have limited experience in the business or exposure to the market. Some of their ideas were worth many thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of regular brainstorming sessions is the effect that they will have on you personally. You will be brighter, sharper, and more creative, most of the time. You will be perceived to be a better, more competent, and more capable manager than you would be if you were not conducting regular brainstorming sessions. You will be building a peak performance sales team on a daily and a weekly basis by asking your salespeople to contribute their very best ideas to help achieve the sales goals of the company.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. Select one problem, question, or goal that seems to be a concern of everyone on your team.
2. Decide immediately to arrange your first brainstorming session, perhaps even later today. As Michael Jordan and Nike have famously said, “Just do it!”