In its 2005 Sales Benchmarking Study, Sirius Decisions defines the top five sales challenges as:
1. Need to be more effective selling to senior-level buyers
2. Need to do a much better job at generating both leads and new business
3. Need to do a better job forecasting effectively
4. Need to improve industry knowledge
5. Need to adopt a more formal way of selling (sales methodology)
John DeVincentis and Neil Rackham sounded the early warning years ago in McKinsey Quarterly: Almost everywhere, transactional sales forces have unsustainably high cost structures; consultative sales forces dont sell deeply enough to win business; and would-be enterprise players lack the cross-functional capacity to create enough value to cover the huge costs of this approach. Most sales forces are in no-mans-land.
While some progress has been made, many sales forces still face the same challenges today.
It is helpful to think how sales executives have approached the problem in the past compared with how we must address the problem in the future.
1970s: First GenerationTraining Courses
In the 1970s, sales training and methodology consisted of a large number of small vendors in a fragmented market. The sales training at that time consisted of point solutions, mainly aimed at skillsXerox professional selling skills, presentation skills, time management, and discovery and linkage skills from individual companies.
Prior to 1970, in addition to product training, sales training consisted largely of motivational speeches and awareness in one- to two-hour bursts, which had a wide range of effectiveness but usually a short shelf life.
1980s: Second GenerationCurriculum Coordination
In the 1980s, since the market was highly fragmented, sales managers and training executives realized that they needed more than one training coursethey needed an entire curriculum of training courses. This was so especially after companies moved from selling products to selling solutions. The birth of consultative selling, linking solutions to business issues, was the standard of this decade.
During that time, vendors often would be asked to meet with their competitors to build a coordinated curriculum for their clients, sometimes internally branded under the clients label.
1990s: Third GenerationIntegration
As buyers moved to companywide solutions, selling to multiple buyers on a committee required competitive and political opportunity strategy management in addition to basic skills courses of how to win individual preference.
Also in the 1990s, sales training moved to an era of tailoring and integration. Buyers wanted materials and processes customized to them and integrated into their CRM systems, training programs, and compensation plans.
Sales managers realized that if they didnt manage the interferences from the rest of the infrastructure, they would be training salespeople to do one thing while paying them to do anotherwith obvious dismal results.
Inconsistent attention was still being paid to adoption and change management issues, resulting in spotty execution.
2000: The Future: Fourth Generation Perpetual Advantage
Improved metrics and visibility into the pipelinealong with integration with sales infrastructure, better deal and performance coaching by front-line managers, and a feedback system that refreshes competitive messaging every 48 hours or less can result in a closed-loop sales and marketing system.
Only with such a closed-loop systemone that integrates sales, service, marketing, design, and perpetual innovation can you achieve perpetual competitive advantage.
Only then can we lengthen the average 24-month employment span of sales executives.
Some of these are new ideas; some are not. Some of these pains have been around for a long time. So then why are they still pains? You already may be aware of these best practices, but the real challenge is, How well is your organization actually doing them?
CHAPTER 2: Pathway to Perpetual Advantage
In talking to several executives who have successfully achieved quantum leaps in sales effectiveness, we have found that they have used similar approaches to define, prioritize, and execute the changes needed in their sales organizations.
After the sale of American Management Systems (AMS), a Fairfax, Virginia-based consulting firm, to CGI, Donna Morea was named president of the newly formed U.S. subsidiary, one of our principal Peter Bourkes accounts.Prior to the merger, AMS and CGI had very different sales organizations. AMS was highly centralized and organized by industryCGI was highly decentralized and organized by geography.
Donnas approach to changing the new organization to a more sales-driven culture concentrated on three legs of a stool.We focused on (1) how we sell, (2) who we sell to, and (3) what we sell, she said.
The first focus area centered on the need to adopt consistent and proven sales disciplines across CGI-AMS (the how). Second, Donna pushed the organization to adopt a new approach to segmenting the market (the who), with the goal of focusing the majority of CGI-AMSs account management and business development resources on a smaller number of strategic accounts. Finally, she worked with her leadership team to overlay the geographically oriented organization structure with an industry focus-enabling CGI-AMS to articulate a clear go-to-market strategy for each of its core industries (the what).
The result was less focus on pure one-off customer consulting and more focus on their core competencies and industry solutions where they already had deep expertise and a solid track record of performance. This was more profitable and lower risk. In the how leg of the stool, they adopted new processes for account and opportunity management. They also redefined roles and responsibilities for the sales teams to reduce the swarming approach used in the past.
To make this new sales culture stick, Morea said she had to get leadership to embrace the new vision initially on faith and ultimately through experience.
Those were the noble means, she said.The less noble means included money. We had a fund that we set aside that included discretionary money for our most important opportunities.To get the money, they had to learn and use the process and the tools.
We wanted to inspire people, Morea said.To sell the vision, it was really important for us to find some quick wins using these principles. Its amazing what a little bit of success can do to convince the skeptics.
I figured 10 to 15 percent would be early believers and sign up.Then, another 60 to 70 percent would follow a win. But there will be 10 to 20 percent who never sign on, no matter what, she said. The 60 percent majority is made up of good people. Once good people see that you have good tools, they will behave rationally. Good people understand that good tools will help them execute.Youre never going to get everyone.
Performance reviewsensuring that sales managers were reinforcing the new culture and coachingwere introduced, and an internal coach, available at large, was added. The internal coachs job was also to monitor the forecast for sales phase changes and to make sure strategy sessions were being conducted at the right time.
The new sales culture is a success. And the company recently closed a $350 million government contract.