Sales Training Is Not Enough. Defining A Sales Ecosytem

One of the things I’ve observed in the past year is a growing recognition that sales has been the neglected stepchild of the multi-family housing operating world. Over the past 15-20 years, we’ve changed how we handled credit scoring, moving from multi-day research to virtually instantaneous decisions; we’ve moved pricing from manual to automated pricing and revenue management solutions; we’ve move property management from DOS-based to web- and cloud-based; and we’ve moved marketing from books and balloons to sophisticated eCommerce solutions. But the one thing we still model and teach the same way we did 20 years ago is sales.

Operators are starting to turn to sales as the next place for significant improvement. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of those I’ve talked to seem to be approaching this as a “training” problem. They want to improve their leasing associates’ success by implementing a sales training program. That will almost certainly get some form of incremental improvement—sales training is unlikely to hurt.

But in today’s world, it’s simply not enough. Pricing and revenue management wasn’t successful because we implemented training—or even because we implemented software. It succeeded because most CEOs/COOs viewed it as a significant strategic and cultural change, and they supported it beyond just the project. They hired and/or promoted people, created new positions, changed rewards and incentives, etc. And of course they also introduced new and updated training.

Substantial improvements in sales requires no less effort. In fact, I would argue it needs more support. There is a “hard math” component to pricing; with sales, it’s almost all soft skills.

So what is a “sales ecosystem?” Dictionary.com defines is as “any system of interconnecting and interacting parts, as in a business.” And that’s exactly what we mean. For sales to truly flourish, all the interconnection parts must work in concert. Training is, of course, a critical component. But it’s not the only one! As a start, make sure you consider the following:

• Business strategy: How sales driven do you really want to be? How many things, other than sales, do you expect your leasing associates to do?
• Recruiting: What are the specific competencies we are hiring for? Inside or outside sales skills? What kind of talent pool are we likely to attract for the compensation we provide?
• Economic rewards: What do we bonus for? How much do we balance base versus variable compensation? • Non-economic rewards: Who wins the “leasing associate of the year” or is part of “the President’s Circle?” What do we give compliments for? What do we criticize?
• Coaching and behavior modeling: Do we have a coaching oriented environment and have we taught for it? What are the key behaviors modeled when regional and senior operators tour? Do they even ask about recent sales won or lost, prospect in the pipeline, etc.?
• Marketing messaging: Is our marketing aligned with our tour path and sales presentation points?
• Measurement systems: What do we measure and report on? If we say we want to be customer-centered, but we gig associates for not asking for the lease on every tour, is that aligned with being customer-centered or “us”-centered?

I’m sure, if you think for a moment, you can come up with one or two more. The point is that training, while necessary, is only one lever and not sufficient to maximize your sales system’s success. So I challenge everyone to think past training—you’ll be much more successful for the effort!