What can you do to avoid the layoffs?

If anything, this year has been an incredibly tough time for sales.

There are layoffs every other week. 

Hugely established companies are making the news daily for 15%, sometimes 25% reductions in their personnel.

Many people have asked me:

“What can I do to avoid the layoffs at my company?”

Sometimes you can't. However, you can do your best to avoid it, by testing out your skillset.

I developed the following checklist to help with my mentees that were finding it hard to find their groove within their position. I divide it up into six different areas and how they’re all interrelated to the main goal in sales, revenue:

1. Outreach
2. Process
3. Time Management
4. Collaboration
5. Attitude
6. Relationship Build 

Breaking it all down, I want you to rate yourself. Under each point, I want you to rate yourself out of 10. Add up and write your rating next to each the category.

For example, as I have written next to Outreach below:

Outreach (  /50)

1. Rate your ability to sell in a meeting and/or demo (  /10)
2. Rate your cold emailing ability (  /10)
3. Rate your ability to social sell (  /10)
4. Rate your cold calling ability (  /10)
5. Rate your ability to hit KPIs (  /10)

Process

1. Rate your ability to close deals and YTD target
2. Rate your knowledge of the company product
3. Rate the cleanliness of your CRM data
4. Rate your use of sales tech
5. Rate your ability to forecast

Time Management

1. Rate your response time to colleagues
2. Rate your response time to leads
3. Rate your meeting timeliness
4. Rate your ability to multitask
5. Rate your calendar control

Collaboration

1. Rate your ability to assist colleagues with their jobs
2. Rate the general team culture at your company
3. Rate your ability to pass leads to colleagues
4. Rate your collaboration with colleagues
5. Rate your focus on helping colleagues

Attitude

1. Rate the positive impact your attitude has on people at work
2. Rate your enthusiasm to pick up out of job description tasks
3. Rate the happiness you get from working at your job
4. Rate the love you have for your job
5. Rate your general mood at work

Relationship build

1. Rate your knowledge of your prospects, clients, roles and companies
2. Rate your general relationships with clients and prospects
3. Rate your ability to read your prospects and clients
4. Rate your ability to schedule follow ups with clients
5. Rate your relationships with your colleagues

How to calculate:

• Rate each point out of 10
• Each category will have a number out of 50

I call it the sales skills matrix. 

By adding up those numbers and putting them next to each category and subcategory, it’ll give you an honest assessment of where your strengths lie and what you may need to work on. 

If done correctly, these numbers are intrinsically linked to your skillset. 

And often, you may not know you’re actually lacking heavily in certain areas. 

Other times, some sales people don’t realize what their core skills are. This exercise helps with that. 

Naturally, not everyone is going to be a top performer in all areas of a role. But it’s important to identify your key weaknesses and strengths, so you know what to work on.

It could really assist with your personal professional development. 

If you need help with reading it further, feel free to reach out.