How Does Iron Cage Increase Sales

Iron Cage provides a comprehensive solution for improving sales performance. Our proprietary algorithm is built on decades of actual experience and actual sales data, delivering insights that can be used to optimize every aspect of the sales process. Our software works by tracking key metrics and providing detailed instructions for managers to follow, removing the guesswork from sales and management. 

In short, it tells you both WHAT is happening with your sales team, but more importantly WHY things hare happening and HOW to fix it.

Four years ago we realised – how we think about these sales metrics isn’t magic. It’s just 40 years of combined experience in sales that’s helped us create some complicated equations in our heads for diagnosing sales problems. We realised that it being in our heads made it unscalable as a solution.

Previously we’d run daily 1:1 meetings with the sales people and get their feel on how things are going and do our best to extract from them the truth of what was going on with their sales figures.

It was exhausting.
Iron Cage eliminates the bulk of the management workload by capturing critical information about every call. We track 31 metrics per operator, per call. About 10 of these are outcome metrics, but the other 21 are insight metrics. We track both these macro and micro data points for very specific reasons.

Why would we track so much data? Because while macro / KPI data will tell you whether a team member is performing or not – it won’t tell you why. You need micro data for that.

For instance, we track the length of each call, where the salesperson gets up to in the script and how the call ends.

Let’s say John and Jennifer both have a large number of calls that end with “send me an email so we can discuss further”. (we call this an information objection).

But the data shows John’s calls are lasting 1 minute on average but Jennifer’s calls are lasting 30. The “what’s happening” part is the same – but the why is very different.

We can infer from this that John is not being engaging or interesting enough in the opening of the call. Send me an email is code for “go away and leave me alone”. There’s been no conversation. John needs training on how to improve this part of his calls.

However Jennifer’s situation is different. She’s been engaging enough to keep people on the phone for 30 minutes – so why aren’t they taking the next steps whether thats a direct sale or booking an appointment, or booking a follow up call with a senior person at the company?

Often, the issue here is either:

1. Jennifer hasn’t built enough value in the call – she’s been engaging and friendly and the person has enjoyed the conversation, but they don’t see

any reason to take an action now. OR,

2. The client has a question that they’re either worried to ask or that they don’t know how to articulate.

Having this information allows us to review with Jennifer both how she’s building value in her calls, and also how she’s asking for and handling objections.

Without collecting this micro data, we’re not able to help Jennifer build out her skill set and improve her performance – which would be a shame.

Jennifer obviously has the raw materials of making a good salesperson –she’s engaging and people like talking to her. Turning her into a high performer is simply a matter of helping her fill her knowledge gaps.

Unfortunately, how this is achieved in most organisations is by having a senior salesperson mentor a junior salesperson – or in some companies, it becomes fashionable to find the best performing salesperson and just try to have everyone replicate what they do.

But in our experience – most people’s best sales person is under performing by orders of magnitude – but we accept that because they’re making some sales and we wouldn’t want to rock the apple cart.

This is where the 4 tennants of the Iron Cage Management princples come into play

#1: Challenge assumptions.

“Thats the way we’ve always done it – thats how our industry works” is something I hear commonly when consulting with companies. The reality is: how everyone else is doing it is certainly NOT the most effective way to do anything. This is particularly true with mature markets with long standing traditions.

If people were still faxing orders when your sales methodology was created, it’s probably time for a refresh.

Challenging assumptions is critical as it allows sales teams to look at different ways of getting the job done with a fraction of the resources that they’re using right now.

#2 Manage macro accountability

Most companies track some kind of macro based sales data. They’ll track sales people against budgets or some form of sales figures that they are directly accountable for. However, often these targets are invented out of thin air and there’s no ramifications for sales people failing to hit these targets.

If you look at your team and you wonder why they seem lackadaisical about making money – this is quite often the reason.

#3 Manage micro accountability

As we discussed above with John and Jennifer’s example – it’s critical to manage against insight based data as well as just outcomes, because micro based data will inform us of the type of conversations to be having with our sales people. You need to know if you’re having a conversation with your salesperson about their skills and training, or if a more serious performance management conversation needs to be had.

#4 Consistency.

Turning the titanic takes time – and so to does changing your sales team. The longer the sales team has been in place taking sub-optimal actions the longer it’s going to take to turn around. So none of this works if its a flash-in-the-pan initiaitive for a couple of weeks with no continued support.

Just as you’re asking your team to be consistent in their output and performance, so too you need to be consistent in how you communicate the iron bars of your company. Once consistent accountability is in place, mediocre and low performers will manage themselves out quickly.

Because here’s a secret that shouldn’t really be a secret: how hard a team member pushes back against accountability is directly proportional to how little work they’re doing. High performers don’t just welcome consistent accountability – they crave it.

You can read more detail about the Iron Cage Method principles here

With our system in place, managers are able to hold daily meetings, conduct 1:1s and make immediate interventions whenever necessary – all within 10 hours a week because the system is capturing the data without requiring the sales people to do “data entry” to keep track of everything.

This also allows managers to test different scripts and sales approaches find out which ones deliver optimal results. This is exactly the same way marketers split test advertising strategies to find top performers. This helps teams adjust their strategies all the way down to different objection handles and responses to common questions. Then, managers can make decisions on actual data instead of relying solely on intuition or experience-based assumptions. 

If you have questions about anything in this report – the metrics we track or how to apply them to your business, I’d love to offer you a FREE, no obligation 60 minute sales audit. I’ll spend an hour with you, looking at your existing sales strategy, how your sales people are operating, and putting together a plan with you on your next best steps for implementing organisational change so that you can hit your sales goals.