By Bob Gaudreau

SINGAPORE - Focus on what's important - any sales team needs to spend more of its time selling, and less on distractions.

As any CEO or business owner knows, good salespeople are a rare commodity, effective sales managers are even harder to find, and an outstanding sales director is the proverbial needle in a haystack.

So what can you do to ensure that your sales organisation performs?

As Thomas Edison famously said: "Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration." In my 20 years running a global sales team, I have found that the 99 per cent perspiration, when properly applied, will achieve the success your business needs.

In fact, the effectiveness of sales organisations could be radically improved across the world by putting in place a few straightforward principles.

I know that these principles work, because they have become the bedrock of my own career, and have helped propel Regus from one city in Europe to 550 cities in 90 countries.

These guiding disciplines are not easy to achieve and they aren't a substitute for Edison's one per cent inspiration, but if a sales leader can use them consistently, success will certainly follow.

Get the hiring process right: Often neglected, the more well thought out and detailed the job description, the clearer the recruitment will be, and it becomes much more likely that the right person will be identified and brought on board.

Insist on a structured interview process with two key components: a formalised interviewer questionnaire, and dual interviews with at least two separate managers.

This leads to consistent questioning, tests candidates' competency against the job description, and ensures an objective decision is made.

If you only hire people you like, you are failing your organisation many times over. Induct, then train: It is important to remember that training and induction are not the same thing.

A good induction helps individuals understand the company, the culture and the expectations of the person and the role. Training, on the other hand, prepares you to do the job at hand for the respective company.

All too often, I have seen only one of these done properly. As part of their induction, our people (no matter how senior) work at every job in the company - even at a reception desk to experience the Regus "meet and greet".

They learn how to work with customers, understand their needs and behaviours, deal with enquiries in the call centre, shadow and support colleagues.

After a four-week induction, we then send our sales people to our School of Excellence, where they polish their sales skills and are tested in all elements of the sales process.

The key takeaway: be willing to invest in sales training, and expect your new trainees to take it seriously and insist they deliver.

Begin by emphasising activity before results: Remember the 99 per cent rule. Once you put your new people on the ground, expect all new sales staff to concentrate on prospecting to build a solid pipeline.

Take a quasi-scientific approach with solid metrics, such as the number of new appointments, prospect cold calls, or structured customer call-back targets.

All the while, evaluate and score their activity during the initial employment phase so that it can be analysed, corrected and/or refined.

Use this to continuously improve your team. Each and every sales rep at Regus has a Personal Development Plan that uses this data to examine their sales skill sets and looks at how we can help them go from "good" to "great".

Motivate and energise: No matter how well you hire and train up your sales team, they still have a tough day-to-day job where they will receive countless rejections from prospects.

It is vital to support your team by fostering a positive attitude, and providing motivational moments throughout the weeks and months.

I expect all of my sales leaders to foster a proactive spirit in their teams and lead by example.

Poor managers say: "Don't do what I do; do what I say." This is nonsense; the greatest motivator is a leader who can walk the walk. I personally monitor our entire sales force of over 1,000.

When I see someone achieves an outstanding personal result, I send a congratulatory note via email.

Last but not least, remember the importance of monetary and other incentives. Aside from the basic commission schemes, introduce special incentives on a seasonal, topical and ad hoc basis - this should not be predictable, but instead focus on driving sales in slow periods.

Align performance objectives with company strategy and performance: All too often sales teams are in the mindset that they function in a vacuum.

Make sure that you have a formal structure to give sales teams a forward view and an in-depth explanation of what the business targets are and how they are to be achieved - not just in sales terms, but also across the whole business.

For example, every quarter I give a "state of the nation" address at a formal business conference for our sales leaders.

 By explaining what your business is going for, and how you are getting there, your sales team can see how the whole company is working with them, and understand their role in meeting those challenges.

Give your team a chance to 'live' the product: Good salespeople are able to get close to the customer, and make them feel like they are really experiencing the product or service they are providing.

We are lucky that at Regus we actually use the products we sell: flexible, impressive, professional locations and facilities.

Our salespeople can work from where they want, when they want by using Regus offices by the day or our lounges by the hour.

This means they can be close to home one day and close to a customer the next day, with access to convenient meeting venues with plug & play technology to make presentations or to print and bind proposals on the go.

In order to provide our customers with the truly global solution they demand, we use our own Regus video-conferencing public studios to meet them in 1,200 locations worldwide. Making sure that your teams can similarly "live" your products, and getting them as close to the client as possible, is vital.

Any sales team, whether pitching to existing customers or looking for new ones, needs to spend more of its time selling, and less on distractions.

A great sales team needs to plan, prepare, ask for the business, differentiate, and - while working hard - have fun.

I have been privileged to sell a product that helps tens of thousands of sales forces around the world improve their sales. Some have indeed been lucky and found Edison's elusive one per cent inspiration.

For the rest of us, it's hard work and dedication that will ensure global sales management success.

The writer is global sales director at Regus

This article was first published in The Business Times.