Author Archives: Brian Geery

Different Lenses – Dealing with Inconsistent or Undocumented Sales Processes

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Different Lenses, a regular feature of The Sales Operations Blog, is a series of blog posts that presents two different perspectives on how to tackle various sales challenges.  By looking at a different problem each month, first through the lens of a sales manager (Brian Geery) and then through the lens of a sales operations professional (Tom Barrieau), we hope to enlighten sales leaders with solutions they can put to use to improve their organization’s sales productivity.

This month’s challenge:  Dealing with Inconsistent or Undocumented Sales Processes.

As any sales operations professional knows, inconsistent or undocumented sales processes reduce a company’s ability to scale.  Unfortunately, any sales manager will tell you how difficult it can be to get experienced salespeople to change their ways, particularly if their existing behavior enables them to achieve their goal.  They say, “If what I’m doing allows me to hit my number, why do you want me to do something else?”  Typically in these instances, we are not seeking major change, just more consistency or refinements of some processes, like entering CRM data, delivering a standardized benefit statement, or asking specific qualifying questions.

Achieving this standardization allows managers to better see what fine-tuning of the sales engine is in order, while giving sales operations professionals a much easier task when aligning processes with automation goals.  As such, establishing consistent sales processes and documenting them for all to see is of tremendous value to individual team members as well as the company as a whole.

The Sales Manager’s Lens

As a sales management consultant, I am constantly cross-pollinating best selling practices and working to standardize them within each client I work with.  By documenting sales processes and driving behavior change as we refine and update them, I can help clients be much more effective at growing the sales organization and delivering predictable revenue.

So, faced with inconsistent or undocumented processes, I start by spending time with my client’s top producers.  I watch what they do and ask lots of questions.  I go into the field to observe calls or side jack when in a call center to listen to phone conversations.  I review commonly used emails and work with my business partner Tom to establish how various processes are or can be supported by the CRM system.  Very quickly, I’m able to spot consistencies and individual best practices.  Then, I review my findings with management to gain consensus on what the standard sales process should be.

Following this, I counsel the client to drive behavior change across the team in several ways:

  • Write down sales processes and best practices learned by shadowing top producers and work with a good editor and graphics expert to make documentation that is scanable and easy to reference
  • Lead strategy sessions with the entire sales team to get their buy-in and make refinements to the written document as needed
  • Reference and continually update sales process documentation at all sales team meetings – make discussion of the new sales process an integral part of the meeting agenda
  • Reward team members who follow documented best practices with public recognition, emails, and sometimes even monetary/non-monetary rewards (e.g., shirts, gift certificates, etc.)
  • Discuss documented best practices during individual coaching sessions, particularly with under-performers
  • Observe sales activity and coach adherence to established processes by doing pre-call planning and post-call debriefing

The Sales Operations Professional’s Lens

As a sales operations consultant, I am constantly searching for where process refinement and automation can improve selling efficiency for my clients.  Fine-tuning sales processes is predicated upon their being well-established and documented.  Similarly, automation initiatives can only be successful when processes are sufficiently standardized and aligned with the automation objectives (for a discussion of sales process and automation alignment, see our post on the topic).

So, faced with a client who has inconsistent or undocumented processes, job #1 would be to meet with sales management to begin the process of documenting current processes, analyzing which of them work well and which need to be streamlined, and standardizing them wherever possible.  The process Brian outlines above is a great one (I’ve seen it work many times) and I make it a point to be an integral part of it, documenting like crazy along the way.

Following this, I work to ground the newly defined process in the broader selling environment by embedding it within the CRM system.  Specific initiatives would include:

  • Make sure sales stages are clearly defined with very specific criteria for how opportunities should be categorized in the CRM system
  • Determine what activities are required to produce an advance (i.e., some customer action that advances their buy cycle) at each point in the sales cycle and make sure there is provision within the CRM to document and track them
  • Provide CRM dashboards that show the process status for each opportunity, expected next steps, and available resources to assist with the next stage in the sales cycle — this last part is critical because it rewards the data entry necessary to track processes
  • Establish clear metrics that measure sales activity and make them available to sales management on a regular basis as a means to gauge process adherence
  • Tie these metrics to key sales performance indicators (e.g., time-in-stage, conversion rate, etc.) and analyze where and how the newly established processes will influence these KPIs — this will give you an indication of where ongoing process refinement initiatives will produce the greatest ROI
  • Hold regular meetings with sales management to discuss process refinement options, adoption and adherence by the sales force, and alignment with the CRM system

By leveraging the perspectives offered by both the sales manager’s lens and the sales operations professional’s lens, we can not only establish and document a well thought-out sales process, we can also embed that process within our CRM system to drive adoption and adherence, improve efficiency through automation, enable our sales professionals with better information flow, and give managers the visibility they need to make sure the process is being worked to maximum effect.

Sales Ops Success Story – Converting Sales into Repeat Business by Improving Client-intake

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To highlight sales operations best practices in action, we periodically publish success stories.  If you know of a situation where sales operations has improved sales productivity or solved a particular sales challenge, let us know – maybe you can star in our next sales ops success story.

Leo von Wendorff, CEO of Virtual Knowledge Workers could not have grown his business by increasing the renewal rate from 0% to 100% without the help of sales operations.  In fact, he probably would have gone out of business.

The Situation

Virtual Knowledge Workers (VKW) provides virtual private assistants (VPAs) who have a multitude of skills and abilities that are matched with the unique needs of each client.  The brainchild of Leo von Wendorff, he came up with the concept based on his own experience as a busy executive. “Any time I traveled for business, I would come back to a desk that was on fire,” he says.  “There was a backlog of things to do that easily could have been done by someone else while I was gone.  As an executive, I felt I was being overpaid to do work I shouldn’t be doing, and not getting to do the work I should be doing.”

VKW operates primarily out of a call center based in the Philippines.  Staffed with people who can be trusted to get the work done, and done right, they are obsessed with quality.  Despite this, they suffered from poor renewal rates; after one month with the service, no one renewed.

The Challenge

Investigation revealed a haphazard client-intake process.  A salesperson would sign on a client, the client would be introduced to their personal assistant, and then it was up to the client to make use of that assistant – or not.  Unfortunately, the lack of proactive follow-through typically resulted in clients not making good use of the service and then declining to renew.

The Solution

A three-step, client-intake process was developed which included solution planning, mobilization, and delivery.  The goal of this process was to put each client on a clear path toward getting the most out of the service.  To support this new client-intake process, a sales operations team was put in place.

Under the new process, signing on a client is followed by a solution-planning meeting that is held in conjunction with a sales operations team member.  During this meeting, the salesperson and sales operations team member learn exactly what each client wants to accomplish in using their VPA.  Mutual expectations are established and, when possible, key performance indicators are agreed upon.

During mobilization, the sales operations professional matches the client’s requirements to VKW’s talent pool.  This includes identifying areas where the VPA may need training and equipping him/her with the technology to get the work done. Because of the solution-planning step, the mobilization process is much more streamlined because everyone in the team is aware of what will satisfy the client.  The customer is much better positioned to quickly and easily take advantage of the service.

The third step is delivery, where the sales operations team makes sure that the key performance indicators are met and even exceeded.  Sales operations follows through with what the salesperson has initially promised with the goal of producing results above and beyond what is expected. By focusing on continuous improvement, the client’s needs are constantly met, which leads to VPAs being an essential part of their business.

The Results

Since a sales operations team was established over six months ago, 100% of new clients have continued with the service and renewed their monthly agreement.  That’s up from zero percent!  By establishing a clear plan of work, and matching that plan to the right resources, customers find it much easier to actually offload tasks, as the service is designed.

In a business highly dependent upon renewals like this one, landing the client is only the first step.  Ensuring that the customer’s buying experience seamlessly translates into a positive usage experience requires a tightly coordinated handoff between sales and service.  By managing a well thought-out client intake process, sales operations was able to bridge this gap and turn sales results into the predictable revenue stream that VKW’s CEO was looking for.

CEOs on Sales – What Company Leaders want from Sales Leaders

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The New England Technology Sales Executives Association recently sponsored an event entitled “CEOs on Selling.”  It was a panel event with ample opportunity for audience Q&A.  The three panelists were Bill Hewitt, CEO of Kalido, Patrick Morley, President and CEO of Bit9, and Stephen Orenberg, Chief Sales Officer of Kaspersky Lab.

Many of the things that company leaders expect from sales leaders – accurate forecasts, timely reporting, good upstream and downstream communications, etc. – are managed by sales operations professionals.  As such there was a great deal discussed that is of relevance to the readership of this blog.

Here are some key takeaways:

On managing the sales process

  • CEOs want sales leaders to carefully manage enterprise deals.  Sometimes it can take two to three years to identify all 50 decision makers so it is important to “ruthlessly qualify” opportunities.  In a down economy, approved vendor lists, procurement requirements, and strict IT specifications are more common so it is vital to understand the purchasing process.
  • Use communication tools like Chatter (a Salesforce.com add-on) to keep all the right people involved (for a list of this and other sales productivity solutions, see our Sales Productivity Blueprint on the topic).
  • Early on, find out your prospect’s key objectives or metrics and incorporate them into the selling process.
  • Ambiguity is not your friend.  Picking the right deals to pursue is important.  Pick your segment and be specific.  Pick targets where you know can solve a prospect’s pain quickly and you’ll shorten the length of your sale.
  • For one CEO, “custom demos are the single biggest driver of sales against our major competitors.” As such, performing them well is crucial (for tips on how to give effective software demonstrations, see our Sales Productivity Blueprint on the topic).
  • My favorite quote from the day:  “We look at selling as every bit as much a process subject to analysis and refinement as our manufacturing process.”

On sales culture

  • To foster a sales-driven culture, start all company meetings with an update on the sales organization’s key performance indicators.
  • To help non-sales personnel understand what the sales organization is dealing with, have sales team members complete a standardized trip report for all first-time prospect meetings.  The CEO who recommended this said, “I read every one.”

On CEO involvement in sales

  • CEOs should be involved in the sales process.  Three areas of common engagement are opening doors with new prospects, being involved in escalations like negotiating special terms, and doing after-the-sale check-ins to validate delivery of commitments.

On key performance indicators

  • Identify metrics that can capture performance throughout your entire sales process – from lead to close.
  • Open communication is imperative.  There is no bad news if you keep communication open – visibility is key!  The last thing CEOs want is a surprise.
  • Honesty and transparency are a must.  No exceptions.
  • Sales leaders should not hesitate to update the CEO when an opportunity’s status turns negative.
  • Quarterly business reviews where you share KPIs and plan the next quarter are important.
  • Sales leaders need to be straightforward with their forecasts.  If they know we will miss a number, communicate it immediately.
  • Investors will never tell a CEO, “That forecast seems high,” but they will be sure to hold you to account if you don’t hit your projections.
  • VPs of Sales should present the numbers to the board so the board knows the CEO and VP Sales are in lockstep.

On top performers

  • The best sales reps “dig in.”  They watch for organizational changes (i.e., a senior executive leaving can stall a deal) and they understand the macroeconomic issues that may impact the sale.
  • Customer intelligence wins deals.  One CEO related a story in which they learned where a key decision maker lived, his monthly mortgage payment, and about his proactive involvement in church.  Discovering that the prospect was very conservative, they dressed accordingly and carefully addressed risk factors.

On selling to CEOs

  • CEOs take calls from salespeople who are educated about the specifics of their situation.  One CEO referenced the phrase, “Show me ya know me.”
  • It is best to ask a CEO who the right person is to speak with about your product or service.

On sales compensation

  • The best information on compensation comes via the recruiting process.
  • One CEO was recently surprised to see the increase in compensation expectations of inside sales professionals.
  • Keep compensation plans simple.  Compensating on margins can be complicated and should be avoided.
  • There are many compensation strategies; the key is to use compensation as the reward for the behavior you want to drive.

On sales plans

  • Sales planning should be both top-down and bottom-up.  Revenue growth and profit targets are relatively easy to determine, the hard part is knowing where to spend your money.
  • Expect quarterly adjustments to sales plans.

On being a CEO

  • One CEO said that when he became a CEO he was surprised how much people wanted him to be happy.  He said business is not a beauty contest, tell it like it is.

Writing Compelling Recruitment Ads – How to Attract and Hire Top Sales Talent

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Recruiting and Hiring Sales TalentAsk any sales executive about recruiting top-producing salespeople and you’ll often hear the same lament; the real challenge is just finding qualified candidates to interview.  There are plenty of B-players out there, but finding A-players – the true sales professionals who consistently achieve their quota quarter after quarter – is not easy.

If, as a sales operations professional, you are involved in your company’s recruitment process, you are then faced with the task of figuring out how best to attract the right sales talent.  A good place to begin your search is to take a look at your recruitment advertisements.  Put yourself in the position of a top producing salesperson who is considering moving on to your next career opportunity, then read your ads and ask yourself these questions:

  • Does your advertisement tell you why this is a good opportunity?
  • Does it answer the question, “Why would I want to work at this company?”
  • In short, does it pass the “What’s in it for me?” test?

If your answer is “yes” to all of these questions, you can stop reading; if your answer is “no,” you might want to read on.

Recruiting Sales People by Getting Their AttentionIt’s worthwhile to think of your recruitment ad as you would a billboard on the side of the highway.  A billboard needs to attract drivers’ attention while they are simultaneously driving at 65 miles per hour concentrating on traffic and their driving.  Similarly, your ad needs to get the attention of top-producing sales professionals who are scanning for the best jobs.

Try this.  Randomly select five ads for sales positions posted on your favorite job board and put them to the test we outlined above.  Here are the opening lines of five ads I selected at random:

  1. “We are looking for an experienced sales representative with a successful record of achievement to develop and to build relationships with key educational, Federal and State accounts and agencies.”
  2. “Establish, maintain, enhance, and update ABC Company sales environments and their associated data and configurations.”
  3. “ABC Company, the leading presentation agency, is searching for a bright Inside Sales Representative to work as an important member of the sales team by identifying leads, qualifying them, and scheduling meetings between decision-makers and our Account Executives.”
  4. “Purpose: To develop and maintain strong business relationships with assigned accounts, recruit new accounts, and educate consumers.”
  5. “A field sales representative with ABC Company is responsible for the sale of electronic components and custom solutions to original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s)”

Notice that none of these openings pass the “What’s in it for me?” test.  It’s not surprising that neither did the rest of the copy.

What each of these ads fails to do is sell the benefits of working at the hiring company.  Consider the intended audience:  top-tier sales professionals (why would you want to hire any other kind?).  These people know they are valuable and only want to work at a company that’s going to make it possible for them to be successful.  Even in a soft economy, good sales professionals are in demand and need to be attracted by compelling ads.

Below are two examples of recruitment ads that pass the test by grabbing the attention of potential candidates.  Using a section called “Why this is a Great Opportunity,” these ads each give a clear set of reasons to apply.

Example A

Why this is a Great Opportunity:

  • Unique and valuable product offering with clear competitive advantages
  • Growing, profitable company with opportunities for career advancement
  • Management appreciates and recognizes sales team members’ accomplishments
  • A lead generation engine that delivers well-qualified sales leads
  • Excellent, experienced sales support staff
  • Product management team that is attuned to the needs of the market and delivers what it wants

Example B

Why This is a Great Opportunity:

  • You will be handed quality leads on day one
  • You will represent a leading edge offering that can solve a wide variety of business problems
  • The company has extraordinarily strong partner relationships and the highest-level certifications with Microsoft and IBM
  • Company sales leaders have an unparalleled track record of success; they know how to build top-producing sales organizations
  • Leading edge sales support and automation will give you the tools you need to succeed
  • Strong customer referral network

To make this strategy relevant for your company’s recruitment ads, simply ask your first line sales managers, “Why would a top producing sales professional want to work at our company?”  Then, ask your front-line sales personnel why they enjoy working there.  Record their answers and start incorporating them into your recruitment ads.

Refine your recruitment ads to pass the “What’s in it for me?” test and be sure to clearly articulate the value of working at your company.  Do this and you’ll soon find the quality of your candidates improving.  Once you’ve started attracting top candidates, you’ll have taken an important first step toward building a winning sales team.

For a more in-depth discussion of building a winning sales team, we invite you to download a Sales Productivity Blueprint on the topic at the Sales Productivity Architects web site.

“Sales Minutes” — A Vitally Important Sales Productivity Metric

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The workday of a busy sales operations professional can easily take a person in many different and conflicting directions.  Investigating various sales productivity solutions, pulling management reports from the CRM system, administering the latest sales contest, etc.  With all these competing demands, how does one prioritize?

The concept of “Sales Minutes”

Image compliments of freedigitalphotos.net

For years, we’ve based a lot of our work as sales productivity consultants on the concept of maximizing “sales minutes.”  Originally, our focus was on the amount of time a salesperson spent in front of qualified prospects actually selling.  Given the basic formula that sales activity = sales results, it only made sense to maximize selling time as much as possible.

Selling has changed, however, and there’s a much greater need for customer research and intelligence.  The meaningful conversations necessary for solution selling can only happen if sales professionals are well prepared and understand their prospect’s needs.  As such, we’ve modified this concept to allow for the importance of account planning and sales call preparation.

We’ve also come to appreciate the importance of how first-line sales managers (FLSMs) spend their time.  Sales Productivity Architects research at clients with large FLSM populations (100+) has shown that the amount of time FLSMs spend on coaching (i.e., guiding and fine-tuning their salespeople’s behavior by spending one-on-one time with them) is the single biggest predictor of sales success.  With this in mind, three vitally important variables to include in any suite of sales productivity metrics are:

  1. The amount of time salespeople spend in meaningful conversations with qualified prospects
  2. The amount of time salespeople spend preparing to have those conversations by gaining customer intelligence through research
  3. The amount of time FLSMs spend coaching their sales team members to become better salespeople

Using these metrics we now have a new conception of “sales minutes” and can prioritize our sales operations initiatives by focusing on those that minimize non-sales minutes.  This can done in a variety of ways, including:

  • Improving the operational efficiency of administrative tasks (e.g., expense reporting) through process streamlining and automation
  • Reallocating activities not critical to the sales process to less expensive personnel such as a sales coordinator
  • Investing in sales productivity solutions (a.k.a., Sales 2.0) that make customer research easier and less time consuming
  • Constantly monitoring FLSM time allocation and make sure they are not acting as the “catchall” for administrative work (Note: this may involve pushing back on senior management if they are making frequent ad hoc reporting requests — something we see altogether too often)

Building a Financial Argument for Improved Sales Productivity

Once you’ve got a handle on how your sales teams spend their time, you can use simple ROI calculations to help determine how you spend your sales operations time and budget.

For customer-facing sales professionals, first determine how many minutes per week they spend on sales call prep and actual sales calls.  These “sales minutes” represent your sales professional’s productive selling time.  Then, divide their quota per week by those minutes to get a dollar-per-sales-minute metric for front-line salespeople.

For FLSMs, you will need to compare how much time each FLSM spends on coaching and compare that to sales team success.  If your data is consistent with our research, you’ll find that there is a clear relationship between coaching time and quota attainment.  By grouping “sales success” into discrete categories (e.g., under 75%, 75-99%, 100-125%, and 125+%) you can determine how much additional coaching time is needed to move between each performance level.

Equipped with this information, you will have a much easier time justifying sales productivity investments when talking budget with the finance department.  For example, one client determined they could reduce the amount of time their salespeople spent scheduling appointments each week from an average of 180 minutes to 30 by investing in scheduling software.  Another determined they could give their FLSMs 25% more coaching time by taking incentive administration and order escalation off their plate, helping to justify additional investments in sales operation personnel.

There are tons of things you can do increase sales minutes, but that’s a topic for another post.  What are some of the time savers that you’ve put in place to increase your organization’s sales minutes?  We’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

Confessions of a Sales Operations Skeptic — a Sales Manager’s Perspective

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I’ve become an evangelist for sales operations and I’m embarrassed it took me so long. While I once thought of sales operations personnel as “necessary overhead, ” I’ve finally realized just how valuable they are. Seeing how much impact a single sales operations professional can have on the productivity of an entire sales team has been enough to put any doubts to rest.

My career has been in technology sales. I’ve been a sales representative, a first-line manager, a vice president of sales, and, for the last 15+ years, a consultant focused on technology sales. My forté is sales management; to me, the reward of coaching an average or underperforming salesperson to become a consistent top-producer is a reward like no other. That is what good sales managers do.

Because I worked for small or mid-sized companies during most of my sales career, I did not have much exposure to formalized sales operations. The IT group took care of our basic automation needs, typically limited to some sort of CRM system, and we managed everything else using email, a web browser, and a spreadsheet. Not that long ago, a sales operations department was the sole province of large, billion-dollar plus companies. Today, the landscape is very different; even companies with a sales force of less than a dozen sales professionals can benefit from a dedicated sales operations function.

Consider the rise of a whole new class of sales productivity solutions, often referred to as Sales 2.0 tools, and the impact that new technology can have on sales productivity. Online applications and services can now address a wide variety of sales needs (e.g., suspect identification, prospect nurturing, proposal generation, compensation administration, sales enablement, etc.) while the advent of highly powerful mobile devices has given sales professionals near-ubiquitous access. Understanding how best to take advantages of these solutions and match them to a particular sales organization’s needs demands a high level of expertise and an ongoing commitment. The sales-automation landscape has become too complex not to have dedicated sales operations professionals.

I’ve seen time and again how a single sales operations professional, through the selection and management of the right sales productivity solutions, can increase per-rep productivity by double-digit percentages. For example, one of our clients calculated that each salesperson was spending over three hours per week just clicking emails back and forth trying to coordinate sales calls. A good appointment scheduling solution can cut that to 30 minutes by streamlining the entire process.

Next, consider the time allocation of a typical first-line sales manager (FLSM). They are often asked to manage customer escalations, investigate revenue/commissions issues, administer compensation plans and incentives, and provide numerous reports for senior management. These administrative activities could easily leave little time for critical sales management activities like coaching.

Offloading non-critical administrative activities from FLSMs to dedicated sales operations personnel can significantly affect the bottom line. So much so that another client was able to use projected productivity improvements to underwrite the formation of an entire sales operations organization – from scratch. Giving each FLSM training on effective coaching and an additional six hours of time to do it served as the financial justification for a 100+ person sales operations team.

So, I’m a convert. I still counsel the importance of good sales management practices, but I now consider skilled leveraging of sales operations a vital part of any successful sales strategy.

15 Questions To Ask Before Investing In Sales 2.0

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Today’s sales operations professionals have a wealth of solutions they can use to raise sales productivity.  However, getting the most out of these solutions — often referred to as “Sales 2.0” tools — can be a challenge.  Despite being touted as “plug and play,” they can easily languish in the early stages of implementation and deliver few of their promised benefits.

Why don’t these solutions achieve the widespread adoption that is key to their success?  Is it because their potential merits are over-billed?  Is it because people didn’t receive the proper training?  Although these are reasons often cited when sales productivity tools fail, a more common cause is that companies often implement solutions without first documenting and refining the processes they are seeking to automate.

For example, a marketing automation solution that is implemented without a sound lead-scoring strategy can easily hurt productivity by sending poorly qualified leads to the sales organization.  Similarly, introducing a customer intelligence tool will do little to improve dialog with customers if sales professionals don’t exercise good call-planning practices.  Even something as common as a CRM deployment can fail to deliver accurate forecasts unless there is a set of consistent sales-stage definitions that all the members of a sales team understand and adhere to.

Whatever sales productivity solution you are implementing, be it suspect identification, prospect nurturing, proposal generation, compensation administration, CRM, sales enablement, etc., these threats can be kept in check by sweating the process details up front.  Clearly documenting current processes and then refining them as needed is the only way to ensure their successful automation.  The goal here is not to fit your processes to the tool, but to make sure that they’re well designed, consistent, and properly aligned with the tool’s capabilities.

Process refinement is an iterative task that often requires crossing organizational boundaries to achieve optimal results.  With this in mind, the formation of an interdepartmental steering committee is a best practice.  Well-moderated meetings by such a committee can reveal issues that were either unrecognized or unspoken and address them before automation begins.  Including representation from sales can also secure their support right from the start.

Here are some discussion questions that can help you use these meetings to build a plan for successful solution implementation:

  1. What is the problem we’re trying to solve?  What’s it costing us?
  2. How much time does the current way of doing things take?  Why?
  3. What information needs to be accessed?  What integration with other systems is required?
  4. How are exceptions handled?
  5. Where might manual processes be required?
  6. What are the user requirements with respect to mobile usage?  User interface?  Reporting?
  7. What behavior change will be necessary?  How do we encourage adoption of new behaviors (e.g., update position descriptions, assign MBOs)?
  8. What cultural factors might slow adoption?  How do we address them?
  9. How are other departments involved in this process?  What do we need from them?  What do they need from us?
  10. What management reports are needed?  How can we embed their use within other processes (e.g., team meetings) so that solution adoption is reinforced?
  11. Do we need phased implementation plan?
  12. What are some early successes we can target?
  13. What are the training requirements?  How will it be administered?  What about remote workers?
  14. What ongoing governance is needed to assure process adherence and data integrity?
  15. How can we measure outcomes?  Where do we expect to reduce costs, increase revenue, or improve efficiency?

As questions are answered and consensus gained, the resulting plan should be carefully documented.  It will be a vital guide for the new behaviors that automation will require and help the implementation team configure the tool so that it achieves rapid results and widespread adoption.  While this may sound like a lot of work, taking the time to document and refine processes prior to implementation will ensure your sales productivity tool investment produces measurable and significant returns.

Lubricating Your Sales Engine By Building A Sales-driven Culture

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One of the many roles that sales operations professionals play is that of liaison between sales and other departments. This role serves a vital sales operations goal: lubricating the sales engine by reducing interdepartmental friction.

What are some best practices in this area? In addition to the classic sales operations approaches of aligning processes, coordinating metrics, and facilitating timely information flow, attention should also be paid to corporate culture. The challenge boils down to this question: “How do we get sales and other departments to view and interact with each other in a manner that promotes sales productivity?”

Here’s an answer that gets to the heart of the matter…

Sales professionals must treat people in other departments with respect and gratitude and people in other departments must treat sales professionals with trust and urgency.

Let’s break this statement down and discuss how we can make it happen.

When a sales professional says they need something quickly, it’s important that other departments be able to trust that there is a valid reason. The eagerness that other organizations often experience from salespeople is because they are trying to respond to a prospective customer’s request. The maxim that time kills all deals is why a sense of urgency is required to proactively support sales.

This trust can be broken, however, by sales professionals who have poor time management skills. It’s an unfortunate fact that some salespeople seem to light a fire every day, treating every request as urgent. These individuals need some quality coaching from their managers. More broadly, sales professionals must show respect for other people’s needs and the time scale on which other departments operate.

For some requests, advance warning is absolutely mandatory if you’re not going to tick people off or interfere with their department’s operational processes. Showing gratitude is, of course, a great way to build positive relationships and entirely appropriate given how much successful selling is a team effort.

Anything that sales operations can do to help other people understand the challenges that sales professionals face can go a long way toward justifying the need for timely responses to their requests. The perception that salespeople are overpaid or spoiled can be checked by reminding others that a notable portion of their income relies on their ability to achieve sales goals. More importantly, other departments need to recognize that failure to achieve those goals can put everybody’s job at risk.

A few other considerations:

  • Sales professionals are typically the ones who spend the most time in direct conversation with the people we want as customers. As such, they are getting first-hand feedback from prospects. Other departments should trust that sales has important information to share if we want to be truly customer focused.
  • Sales professionals need to understand that their viewpoint is often constrained by their particular set of customers. Marketing professionals, for example, are looking at target populations more broadly and may well have good reasons for not agreeing on how a product or promotion should be executed. To avoid appearing overly self-interested, salespeople need to respect these differences and act accordingly.
  • The respect that sales professionals should demonstrate also come from an understanding that other people have their own jobs to do and are inconvenienced when they must drop everything to respond to a request. When others respond with a sense of trust and urgency, sales professionals should express gratitude. They need to say a sincere “Thank you,” send a note of thanks, relay a positive comment to their manager, and most importantly – give credit where credit is due when a deal is won. Patiently articulating the need for timeliness and showing abundant gratitude when other people are responsive isn’t just common courtesy, it’s good sales practice.

As sales operations leaders, we are uniquely positioned to lead this cultural transformation. To make it happen, we need executive support and a shared conviction that this is a critical path to sales success. Meeting with key department heads, coaching first-line sales managers, and selling them all on the value of this approach will allow you to lead the creation of a sales-driven corporate culture. A well-oiled sales engine will be the welcome result.