Sales & Marketing Management - September/October 2008 - (Page 23)

Here’s some food for thought: Why does the sales department so often rank dead last when it comes to process, measurement and consistent performance? Think about the other departments in your company. Those CPAs in finance follow GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) guidelines. Manufacturing departments have Lean Manufacturing, Just-in-Time and the Toyota Production System, among other approaches. Our colleagues in marketing depend on process and measurement with many of their functions, direct response being only one. ISO 9000, Six Sigma and FDA validation are three among many more process, quality and consistent performance standards. So why is sales last? One reason is the long-standing belief that sales is more art than science. It isn’t, and those senior executives who believe that it is are propagating the problem. Another reason is the ongoing practice of promoting successful, right-brained, intuitive salespeople into sales management jobs requiring predominantly left-brained, process-oriented skills, behaviors and thinking—like deploying and ensuring compliance with a sales methodology. Diagnosis: no methodology their competitive situation,” he says. A significant benefit from this type of process is the freeing up of resources from deals that would never happen. “Without a structured process, you’ll continue to beat a dead horse, thinking it will rise again,” Summy explains. “The process helps you know when to walk away.” Objectivity is critical for sales success. Process forces salespeople and their managers to seek truth and face it unemotionally. And the research shows … It’s easy enough to spot symptoms that indicate an absence of a sales methodology and its constituent processes. Take the case of a company that struggled with significant business challenges resulting from their inability to forecast when deals would close. A defective qualification process precluded salespeople from seeking the facts about their prospects’ timeframes and urgency to buy. Another company spent a lot with a third-party lead generation firm, yet had little to show for it. They had no formal, closed-loop process detailing definitions, tasks, workflows and accountability. In a third example, sales management thought they were doing things the right way: Sales reps presented their current opportunities in weekly war rooms attended by senior managers in sales, customer service, marketing and R&D. But even with the help of those highly paid resources, deals were still being lost. The reason? There was no process for conducting the war rooms. Critical sales tasks were skipped, account intelligence was incomplete and there was no plan to win. Gary Summy, director of sales development with Trane Commercial Systems, is a firm believer in methodology and process. “Salespeople need a good, formal process by which they can understand, among other things, their customer’s urgency to buy and www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com If you’re thinking all this talk about methodology and process sounds good but doesn’t apply to you, consider this: Studies performed by leading research companies all point to the same conclusion—sales process makes the difference between winning and losing for most organizations. “World class sales forces have come to acknowledge two key truths that now usher in the era of sales process,” states the Chally World Class Sales Excellence Report 2007. “First, sales is no longer the domain of individualist mavericks who succeed through inherent personal ability and brute force of will. “Sales executives are no longer satisfied to wait and see how their sales force is performing. They want to manage it … But you can’t manage what you can’t measure and you can’t measure without formal processes.” If you are using a sales process, what impact is it having on performance? CSO Insights’ Sales Performance Optimization—2008 Survey Results and Analysis posed that question to executives from more than 1,500 companies; 87% of the respondents said sales process either significantly (38.5%) or moderately (48.9%) improves sales performance. Deploying your own sales methodology is mandatory for long-term success … and even survival. So what do I do now? We recommend engaging with a consultant or specialized sales training firm, but it is possible to accomplish this internally. An experienced consultant who has built sales methodologies for companies in different industries can provide a perspective that no one within your company has—an outside-in view. If you don’t have the time and resources to get this done the right way, the first time, you need outside help. Whether you insource or outsource this initiative, here are the minimum steps required to build an effective, flexible, pragmatic selling methodology and deploy it within your organization: 1. Begin with a comprehensive, objective assessment of how your customers buy. You will need to sell to your customers the way they prefer to be sold to. If you 23 Richard Schneider/stock illustration source/getty images SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008 SALES &MARKETING MANAGEMENT http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - September/October 2008

Sales &�Marketing Management - September/October 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Brian Tracy University Smart Sales Sales Strategy Smart Marketing Marketing Strategy Smart Management Management Strategy The Low-Cost Sales Leader Why Sales Process Gets the Shaft Training Q&A Technology Making the Case for Travel (Part II) Travel/Meetings On the Road The Way I See It

Sales & Marketing Management - September/October 2008

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