ATE Sales Bootcamp - Day 1

Today has been a very intense first day at the ATE Sales Bootcamp in Lund, full of good information on how to level up sales. It's a super interesting group of entrepreneurs - skincare, relationship business, brain training, furniture, food, e-commerce and me.

I feel like I know nothing about sales - everything feels new but very interesting and very useful. Up until this point I've never had a sales strategy, honestly I've been guessing a lot and went with gut feeling for the most part. I think that's something that can work when your business is built upon relations, because without relations we can't make sales happen anyway. But I think to be able to level up my business and reach the vision for Massive Performance, the plan is extremely important. Without a plan and clear goals it will be very hard to realize the potential that Massive (and I) have.

The day consisted of two workshops. One about sales and one about CRMs. I've summarized them both to share my experiences and hopefully a few other lost souls out there can benefit too :)

Sales

We discussed important factors in growth and sales, and most were probably what we all "know". Here are some of them;

• Product market fit
• Understanding customer and customer needs
• Forming the right sales team
• Effective lead and sales process
• The right sales tools and training

Seem kinda obvious, right? I think it's when you dive into each and every one of those that it gets complex and HARD. I also think that's what people tend to do. We were asked "what is the most important thing?", and we all said things like understanding the customer, understanding the product, having the right systems blah blah blah. But, it turned out to be the execution model - so basically the system for creating the right conditions for sales to actually happen.

Apparently it's very Swedish to think that if the product is just "good enough", it will sell itself. And that's how many products end their very short life. Sweden is the worlds second most innovative country, but we kinda suck at selling our inventions... I can definitely say I'm stuck in that mindset, I've thought selling is the worst thing evarrr for most of my life, even as a kid. You DO NOT want to sell. I'm slowly changing my beliefs around this, but it's a lot harder (and slower) than I'd like it to be.

Anyways. We moved on to goals and potential. I've got a pretty good idea of where I want to be with Massive (as it is) within the next three years and have a goal when it comes to revenue and goals. I'm a bit shy with goal setting (in relation to vision) as I have doubts about whether I can do it, if I'll be enough to deliver like a boss. We discussed goal setting for a bit - how do we set the goals? Are we letting previous experience dictate our expectations (me) or are we letting the vision lead the way? It seems I've been going about this from the worst possible angle, not actually seeing the POTENTIAL, but letting all the possible obstacles, and previous results dictate possibility. So pretty low goals. It all came out in a glorious conversation, and as we had it I saw the light. So I'm on my way home now, trying to reverse my thinking and do again, do it right. From the end to the start, rather from the start to the end. Reverse thinking :)

We then went on to talk about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are of course sightly different for different companies, but as a "relationship company" I believe that all human interaction (mostly in the gym and calls) are our most valuable touchpoints. So we are going to start measuring these - and hopefully we'll notice a boost in customer experience as well! So suitable KPIs for Massive could be "X amount of interactions each day" and how much time each day are spent doing any type of sales activity in or outside the gym.

KPIs/goals can be split into two categories - Lagging and leading KPIs. Lagging KPIs would be those that you can't control (like any results, things you look at AFTER they've happened) and leading would be things that you CAN control and lies ahead, like how many interactions or hours of sales you need each day/week/month to reach your goals for a set time. This was new to me, but it's exactly what I need to lead my team better and be able to delegate important tasks without having to spend too much time instructing (that's not fun for anyone!). So the good thing about focusing on leading KPIs, (ACTIONS!), is that you can focus on behavior that leads to the right thoughts and the right feelings associated with sales. That means you get better at it and you build your skills! And so much easier to communicate to the team as well!

Lagging KPIs

• Revenue
• Profit
• Sales/Order value

Leading KPIs

• Number of sales calls
• Number of hours spent on sales
• Number of booked meeting

Using the leading KPIs also helps with identifying potential issues for why you aren't reaching the "right" lagging goals. By measuring and changing the leading KPIs as needed you can improve your results with better accuracy in the lagging section. Pretty sweet!

The last thing that came up was to create an engaging scoreboard for the team. We want to win, and we want to see ourselves win! So tracking the right stuff and getting them on a scoreboard keeps the team motivated and everybody on the same (right) track!

So, to summarize, these are the important parts of the first workshop;

• Set goals according to potential
• Identify KPIs and measure these
• Create an engaging scoreboard to the team

CRM Software (Customer Relationship Management)

I'm already using a CRM for the gym (Gymsystem), and I've tried A LOT of different ones. Mostly gym related CRMs, but also a few sales oriented. One among them is Hubspot, which is what we will be using for the bootcamp. I really like it - it's easy and cheap (free actually). I'm wanting to use a CRM for some of the gym work, as we can't see email conversations and sales activity in our current software (only if we log manually). So I can definitely see some benefit to complementing with Hubspot!

There's not AS much to say here, but that's probably because I already know more about them. The less I know about something, the more I need to write about it! So basically, we set up the system, went through settings and configurations and tomorrow we'll probably get started for real!

I was pretty grateful we didn't do more in one day - the first workshop was enough to drain my brain, and the second one was just enough new information to be able to get soaked up by this mush-brain... I'll need a good nights sleep to get the most out of tomorrow, can't wait to learn more! :D