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Sales Effectiveness: Planning for Growth

Posted by Pete Krammer on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 @ 09:09 AM
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There is no doubt that at this stage of the economic cycle, smart investments in sales effectiveness can pay excellent dividends. Let's start with the premise that your board of directors has given the green light to discrete, strategic spending for 2010. The CEO has come to you or your boss and asked for a business plan on growing sales so that he or she can determine the payback if some of that strategic budget is sent your way.

What is your plan?

Before the recession started, you may have spent dearly on sales training, CRM and other productivity tools, but the combination of economic panic and resulting market pressures have conspired against your making real headway. Meanwhile, you believe that your products and services can deliver excellent value for your customers - right now, in this economy. So how do you set up an environment where your salespeople can get a big bump in sales before your competitors get the jump on you?

First, answer these three questions:

  1. How much new revenue did the last sales training class deliver?
  2. How much new revenue has your CRM delivered in the last 18 months?
  3. How much new revenue did "non-selling" departments in your organization deliver in the last year?

If the answers to any of these three questions, or others you may have thought of, are underwhelming, perhaps the problem isn't a specific training, technology or process issue, but how these things integrate and work together. Study after study bears out that the best training in the world is worthless if your organization can't support it with reinforcement, process change, and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. A great CRM system doesn't help close deals if people can't figure out how to access all the great stuff it contains. At the end of the day, were dashboards and forecasts what you were really after? And, if all of your "non-selling" departments aren't actively participating in creating value for new (and current) customers, it's unlikely your salespeople can carry your company to success on their shoulders alone. These are just three elements out of a multitude that affect sales organizations.

What should you do to to get the most out of discrete investments? Here are three tips:

  1. Leverage. Unless you're very lucky, you don't have a blank check. Instead of searching for yet another magic bullet, think about how can you integrate your people, work processes and technology through a knowlege management system so the end result is an environment that makes it easier for salespeople to sell. After all, it's the ability to close deals, not create forecast data that matters most right now.
  2. Plan. Keep your scorecard balanced. Your customers, people, finances and processes all matter. Limit your objectives to the critical few and within a time scope that is relevant to this economy - very few people know where we're actually headed yet. Make sure that your accompanying strategies and action plans address only these critical few objectives.
  3. Communicate. A beautifully articulated plan does nothing if it sits in a file on your desktop. Engage and enroll your team in the process, let them know where you're headed, and let them help you create the ROI your CEO has asked for.

 

 

 

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COMMENTS

Good comments Pete! I recently talked to a Director of Marketing who stated that their sales people did not use the productivity tools they have been given. Why invest more? My response is that the tools haven't helped them do their job of selling. Investment needs to be made in tools that move the sales process along and sales knowledge management does that.

posted @ Thursday, November 19, 2009 4:13 PM by Dave Blackburn


Once again, more tough love questions from Pete Krammer! Asking executives how much new revenue comes from sales training, CRM and overhead departments is bold and provocative? And it needs to be asked, particularly given this sluggish economy.  
 
 
 
The other question every executive/business owner needs to be asking is "what can all of the non-sales people in our organization do to make it easier for our salespeople to sell!" It's sad, but even this deep into this recession, I doubt there are many businesses that ask that question...routinely, and mean it! 
 
 
 
Pete...keep reminding us business is first and foremost about people! And don't ever let us forget PEOPLE BUY...not technology!

posted @ Thursday, November 19, 2009 7:44 PM by Jim Horan


Hi Peter 
 
 
 
Thanks for an interesting blog contribution which validates my own experiences. I wonder how much sunk cost and faith have been placed in CRM? And how much incremental revenue has been really delivered against these investments? Don’t misunderstand me, CRM has an important part to play in sales process automation but does little to advance the cause of the sales and channel teams to help organizations improve revenue and quota attainment. There is a mismatch between the promise and paradigm of CRM and the reality of what CRM actually delivers. It is the difference between what you must do versus how you can do it better. 
 
 
 
So I feel the missing piece of the equation is rather than just being insular and focusing on the internal contact record updates, sales process stages and forecasting, sales people need knowledge and information to better support their sales efforts. What’s happening in the field? What are my competitors saying about us and how can I overcome objections? How can I better articulate value rather than discount price during negotiations? And so on. 
 
 
 
To do this effectively they need the right knowledge to support them. To allow them to raise their personal sales success as well as improve the cumulative attainment of the sales team as a whole. Going to an annual sales kick off is not the answer alone and nor is training which is often forgotten and not implemented without ongoing reinforcement in the field. Sales people never have enough time so getting them to search for information which may or may not be there amongst the myriad of organization solution seems a waste of valuable sales time. 
 
 
 
Now just imagine if you could deliver this knowledge within a CRM application itself? If this knowledge proves useful for sales people you also solve the headaches of user adoption of CRM itself, because sales people will flock to a destination that really provides them value and helps them reach and even exceed their revenue quota. 
 
 
 
My two cents  
 
 
 

posted @ Friday, November 20, 2009 1:02 PM by Simon Shah


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