I’ve been discussing how a strategic approach to sales may involve standing still for a while in order to create solid future growth. In order to achieve that the strategy must contained two properly defined and detailed processes.
First and foremost a sales process that enables everyone to sing off the same song sheet. Secondly you need a process for hiring salespeople that achieves more than 20% success rate which is the industry norm.
I still find myself startled by how many sales organisations attempt to push sales by the end of the month at the expense of the sales plan . Sales, as much, and arguably more than, as anything else in business, needs to be consistent and predictable. One last heave is a failure to appreciate that pressure now will only increase sales today, by dramatically changing what you are doing by doing something different, discounting or changing critical components of your offer.And, of course, once you do this you have created the precedent and conditioned buyer behaviour to expect this
But, if you make changes today to push sales this month/quarter then you are creating a situation in which you shorten the sales cycle and create problems which ensure you will be in the same position again unless you increase the velocity into the pipeline at the beginning of the process. And, how then, do you then balance the equation that filling the pipeline is an activity performed by the same people who you are expecting to speed up the closing rate by repositioning proposals and closing with the impending event.
The influence should have been applied a sales cycle ago in order to achieve results today.
By having a well understood sales process, well communicated and understood by everybody you can establish a basis for coaching and supporting your sales team. You also create a framework with which to report to your CEO and board, and spot, predict and adjust for changes in market conditions (wouldn’t we all have liked that in 2008). If that board are from Finance, Manufacturing/Development, IT, Marketing they will better understand process than excuses and you will be seen to be leading instead of reacting.
Unless you want your sales to lurch from Feast to Famine and back again you need to have a specific predictable and easy to follow process. With more than 3 salespeople this process should be embedded in your salesforce automation system, and I would strongly suggest that you use an online system such as Zoho that also enables you to link to your website – you can see this in action at here .
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