Smoke and Mirrors Sales Figures

 Posted by Patrick Stakenas at 6:10 PM

 More often than not, when it comes to companies meeting their sales figures, there is a disconnect between what the CEO expects and what the vice president of sales can realistically deliver. The true challenge for the head of sales lies in how to substantiate to the CEO why the numbers were missed, or, if they were made, how they were arrived at.

A recent article published on MarketingProfs.com titled “Lies, Damn Lies and Dashboards,” stated that CRM and business intelligence dashboards are often manipulated by managers and marketing execs to present a positive outcome that doesn’t necessarily promote the truth. The key to establishing a trusting relationship between sales and the boardroom is to put in place a process for determining how a representative or team is doing against expectations.

This often involves using technology that can track, measure, and report on both the leading and trailing indicators of the company’s sales goals. It also provides you with a system for tracking the progress of your salespeople. Done properly, senior sales leaders can deliver the truth that CEOs can and want to handle. If things are going well, the vice president should be able to explain what is driving the success of sales and why, and also how those sales will be sustained. If it is a rebuilding model, the same applies.

The vice president must be able to show where the bad news is; he or she should have an explanation for what is happening with the sales trajectory, and what the plan needs to be to correct the situation. CEOs make the connection between fluff and what matters. And with sales, it can’t all be smoke and mirrors. Patrick Stakenas is president and CEO ForceLogix, a Chicago-based company that builds on-demand sales performance management solutions.

 

Want more sales? Focus on the Highest Probability for Success!

Let’s face it, not all sales people are created equal. And, not only are they not created equal, some are successful regardless of the process or plan you have in place, and some fail, regardless. Identifying the sales people with the highest probability of improving will net you big results. So the question is, “Where do you start in determining who these reps. are?”

Start with what might not seem so obvious; your “B” players. Leave the “A” players alone for the time being, and focus primarily on the “B” players and up and coming “C” players and you will ultimately see better results faster.  Within the “B and C” players, there are many reasons why they can’t seem to move up or ahead but they are often not obvious reasons, and focusing your energies here will help you determine what is holding them back.  Many articles, white papers, and books may give you the holistic answer on solving your overall sales problem, but in a short answer, don’t try to solve the overall problem with one approach. Take a closer look at where your highest probabilities of success exist, and start there in determining how you are going to get them to sell more.

The main reasons salespeople fail to perform are due to lack of direction and little to no accountability. Salespeople, no matter how professional or how experienced, need direction and should expect accountability.  Your “B” performing salespeople can be your best asset if managed properly. Here is some thought on where and how you might want to focus:

Create a process where your managers have access to key data that will open up selling environment.  Make information easily available to the manager, track who they are spending time with and if they are coaching these sales people. The sales manager must take responsibility for the success of each and every sales person independently. They are leading the charge on the front lines and many managers will simply “hope” that things will miraculously turn around in the broad scope. Sales managers must provide leadership and support to the salesperson and senior executives or business leaders must provide the framework for success.  Providing the necessary outputs, expecting “one on one” coaching, tracking the progress, and holding each manager responsible to the success of each person openly will help you zero in on the opportunities.

Sales people must know exactly what is expected of them, but unfortunately most managers fail to communicate expectations clearly to their salespeople. It is common for salespeople and managers to think they’re doing fine, but, the company is considering them as underperforming and frustration begins to build at the senior management levels. Communicate expectations, such as what is expected for sales activities, customer meetings, product knowledge etc. in addition to sales revenue, and document this on a consistent basis through the use of sales performance management tools.

Your salespeople have a quota for a reason.  Why on earth would you risk not attaining revenue by not knowing who has the greatest opportunity to make the number? It is one thing to rant and rave about accountability, but another still, to dig deep into what you are holding people accountable to.  If you are only holding managers and sales people to a number, they will never get to the number.  It is necessary to hold them accountable to getting to the number.  How many deals are in play, how deep in the prospect is the sales person, what is the predictability of the sales person’s ability to deliver?  Hold your managers accountable for knowing this.  Weekly team meetings are great and necessary to understand the sales pipeline and sales activity, but go deeper to find out what is really happening. Find out if your sales manager really understands what is occurring during the sell cycle.  Don’t wait until it’s too late, track each and every individual salesperson and discuss their performance ongoing against expectations; don’t wait for the weekly meeting or monthly performance review. Where you have poorly performing salespeople, they should be on a plan to achieve small milestones within a specific time frame.

Often times, companies think that will drive the end result with just an aggressive compensation plan. If your “B” sales person is happy with a certain income, no compensation plan in the world will motivate them to sell more.  Again, it is imperative to know and understand each and every sales person and set standards at their level for performance. Annual reviews will not help this either.  The review process must be a day to day process and your managers must be actively involved with each and every underperforming sales person and this process must be tracked to determine the manager’s ability to get the sales person to perform.

Start by simply identifying and focusing on the sales people with the highest probability for success. Take this step first and use technology to track the process and you will begin to see better, longer lasting results before you know it.

 

The CEO, Boardroom Can Handle Truth on Sales Performance

By ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas One aspect of being a senior sales leader or vice president just does not seem to change. Each month or quarter when senior sales leaders meet with the CEO or get invited into the boardroom, substantiating why the number was missed or why the number was made is always a difficult challenge. The challenge becomes even more difficult when the conversation shifts from process and deals to salespeople and sales management teams. CEOs and boardrooms have little choice but to trust what is often the vice president’s opinion or what is a consolidated opinion based on conversations with sales management. While having subjective input is necessary, facts speak much louder in sales. Senior sales leaders must track both the facts (objective) and the gut/emotion (subjective) and have a succinct operating plan with backup data to support the direction they are providing. CEOs and boardrooms are under immense pressure to deliver to shareholders and investors. It’s in the best interest of the senior sales leader to deliver the truth. The key, however, is that senior sales leaders really have to know what the truth is related to sales performance and their salespeople and be able to stand behind it. In a recent article published by MarketingProfs.com headlined “Lies, Damn Lies and Dashboards,” it was sighted how CRM and business intelligence dashboards are often manipulated by managers and marketing to present a positive outcome that doesn’t necessarily promote the truth. This can happen understandably as the person delivering the message wants to find the positive in the situation and the data is typically delivered to the manager level in Excel spreadsheets. These are easily manipulated. The key is putting in the process and technology to lock down the truth about how a representative or team is doing against expectations and locking down the process and technology that tracks, measures and reports on both the leading and trailing indicators to achieving set goals. Providing this information in an easy-to-use fashion is extremely important. If it adds work to a manager, they will not use it. The process and technology have to eliminate tasks, reduce downtime and provide actionable insight into what is happening. It also must allow a manager to input how a salesperson is progressing against coaching and training. The data must roll up to senior sales management untouched by mid-level management. As the business sets organization goals and revenue requirements, there is an assumption that sales will just deliver it. This is often a disconnect between what the CEO feels they must have and what the vice president can deliver. However, senior sales vice presidents can manage what happens between the two points. If the proper process and tools are in place to manage sales and the people who must deliver, it is possible to connect the sales function to the rest of the organization in strategic terms and create a common format through which the sales process is formulated, executed and monitored. Organizations must have a mechanism that can create a cohesive sales team. This should be managed by the same set of messages and reinforced through coaching. Senior sales leaders must be able to identify, communicate and respond to the needs of the organization. This is not possible without an ongoing process that defines, measures and analyzes salespeople. In order to gain trust with CEOs, senior sales leaders can no longer deliver smoke-and-mirror communications from the sales department. CEOs make the connection between fluff and what matters. You must have a system in place for understanding, refining and measuring your sales process and tracking your salespeople. Done properly, senior sales leaders can deliver the truth that CEOs can and want to handle. If things are going well, the vice president should be able to explain why and what is driving the success and how it will be sustained. If it is a rebuilding model, the same applies. The vice president must be able to show where the good news is, what is happening and why and the plan to correct the situation.

 

The Days of Relying on The Sales Superstar are Over!

Why is it every month and every quarter you are going back to the same person to save the day? Well, you know they have the relationship, the clout if you will, with their customers, to move an order ahead or create an opportunity or artificially move volume to at least give the company the illusion of revenue. Many times they have done it for you, but why you are in that situation to begin with? And in these challenging economic times, your luck is running out.

The real problem is that the most of your sales people are average at best, we are talking about people who do not know how to articulate value and solve their client’s business problem, don’t really understand the marketing message or the product and are often “order taking”.

It is somewhat ironic that organizations spend considerable money, time and effort on trying to figure out what to do to get them to sell more, and immediately after training or rolling out selling tools, everyone goes right back to what they were doing. Habituated to their old ways of non performance and getting away with it.

Despite having an apparent experienced sales team, despite having good sales practices and processes in place, organizations continue to struggle and back we go again to the “hero” to save the day. This can all be avoided and you can set your sales team on a path of success.

1- Set expectations with your managers that they will work with the B players.
Leave the “hero” alone as other than padding your ego, your assistance is most likely not needed. Focus on the sales people who have the highest probability to succeed with the biggest potential impact. Good sales managers are master instructors, experts in timing their coaching, flawless in execution of the plan, and sensitive to the needs of each of their sales people. They do not buckle under pressure or corporate fodder. They have the capacity to inspire others with their hard and intelligent work. Such leadership talents are vital for a sales organization to thrive and prosper.

2- Find real sales management talent and get rid of the fakers.
Some people are really not cut out to be sales managers; everything is about getting the order and not teaching. They don’t believe in differentiating sales people by talent or going out of their way to discuss a sales persons needs, and are constantly worrying about their monthly sales numbers. They participate in sales workshops but learn little. They don’t like making tough calls and understanding problems. How can they manage?

Sales managers should exude warmth, friendliness but firm, and an eagerness to offer solutions to help the sales person sell more. They also should know the marketing message, products and services they are selling better then anyone.

3- The sales manager who listens, coaches and understands, wins.
Each sales manager brings their own unique personality traits to managing people. Some are sincere, some are thorough with technical details, others are helpful with problem solving.
There are sales managers that are good listeners. They listen to the sales person thoroughly to understand the client’s problems or their internal problem and offer solutions. By bringing a little effort they add value to the sales person as well as the organization.

4- Successful sales managers have a process, a plan and know everything about the sales person.
The profession of sales and sale management is a creative and wondrous one, where at one end of the spectrum are big dollars and on the other end the possibility of job loss for non performance.
Successful sales managers are driven by the zeal to solve both internal problems and client’s business problems. They have data on the sales person, not just revenue data, but success rates, forecast and pipeline accuracy data, they know if the sales person understands the company message, products and services and work with the sales person to be better.

Do your sales managers have the above characteristics? Can your sales managers rely on the team to deliver? If you’re waiting on the hero, your time may be short.

 

Incentive Compensation Survey—Take the Survey, Find Out Current Practices and Trends

My friend, Julien Dionne, of OpenSymmetry, has asked me to let folks know about a incentive compensation survey they are conducting.  OpenSymmetry is an independent, highly specialized consulting company focused in the areas of Sales Performance Management (SPM) and Business Intelligence with offices in Austin, Texas and London.

The purpose of this survey is to identify trends regarding practices and technologies used to design and administer incentive compensation programs from a wide range of industries, and to provide this up-to-date information to participants.

The survey results will enable you to:

  – gain further insight into your own organization’s compensation practices
  – make valuable comparisons between your company’s compensation practices
     & market norms
  – enhance or redesign your current compensation policies and programs

So, head on over to http://surveys.opensymmetry.com/s-8vpil-103150 and take the survey.  The more participants, the more useful the data-to both OpenSymmetry and to you.

 

The Benefits of Automated Performance Appraisals for Managing Sales Staff

There’s no doubt about it, technology is changing the way we manage people, regardless of their role in the organization. Automated performance appraisal software in particular is having a huge impact, and in ways that can be particularly helpful to sales people.

Beyond just automating our forms and processes, resulting in less paper, leading web-based performance appraisal applications are allowing companies to:

• Conduct more frequent performance appraisals
• Better align individual and organizational goals and track progress on these
• Make more frequent and better use of 360 multi rater feedback
• Improve the quality, breadth, depth and more consistency of feedback
• Improve the integration with other talent management processes like compensation, development, succession planning

Let’s look at these improved capabilities in more detail.

More Frequent Performance Appraisals

One of the most common complaints about most performance management processes is that they are once a year events that are quickly forgotten. Employees need regular, ongoing coaching and feedback to succeed and improve. This is particularly important for sales staff and for Gen X and Millennial employees. A manual paper-based process makes it too expensive and time consuming to conduct employee reviews more than once or twice a year. Because automated performance appraisal applications make the process faster and easier for everyone, sales teams can afford to conduct appraisal more frequently, giving employees the regular feedback and direction they need.

Better Goal Alignment and Tracking

With a paper-based process, it was virtually impossible, or at the very least impractical to set organizational goals and communicate them to the organization in a way that allowed individual employees to “connect” their personal goals to them. Now, the leading performance appraisal applications make it simple. High-level organizational goals, and even associated divisional and/or departmental goals, can be captured in the application and made visible to all staff. Employees and managers can view these goals when setting individual goals and can physically link an employee’s goal to a higher level one. This gives all employees the context they need for their work. Even better, everyone can provide information on the status and progress of their goals, and everyone up and down the reporting chain can view the status. Imagine your sales staff being able to see their progress in context with the department’s and even the entire company’s. Talk about driving engagement and accountability.

Easier 360 Multi-Rater Feedback

Feedback from s other than their manager can be invaluable for a sales person, since they typically work very independently. It gives the employee and manager a broader view of their performance and often wonderful insights into areas of strength and weakness. What’s prevented most sales organizations from using this valuable information source in the past has been the sheer volume of associated paperwork, the administration required and the difficulty collating and using the results. Today’s automated performance appraisal applications make it a breeze. Control over initiating the requests for 360 multi-rater feedback can be given to the HR process administrator or to the manager, and results can even be rolled into the employee’s appraisal automatically.

Better Quality Feedback

Many managers limit the amount of written feedback they give their sales staff because of the time, effort and energy it takes to provide. Automated performance appraisal applications give managers tools like comment helpers that provide suggested text to describe performance. The better systems also include coaching tips and suggested development activities that organizations can even expand and/or customize. Now managers don’t have to spend time searching for the right words. They just click a button and choose text from a list. And of course, spelling and language sensitivity checkers are included. A secondary benefit of these tools is that employees get consistent and standard feedback. Most companies who adopt these tools find their managers give more, better detailed feedback, and employee performance improves.

Better Integrated Talent Management Processes

The best automated performance appraisal applications are offered as part of an integrated suite of talent management applications. This means that the different applications can share data, so managers can use actual performance ratings and feedback to drive compensation programs, development planning and even succession plans. There really isn’t an effective way to integrate your talent management processes if they’re paper-based. Think of how you could effectively foster a culture of high-performance in your organization with this kind of integration. And numerous research studies have shown that companies who adopt integrated talent management processes outperform their peers.

Technology is making people management easier, opening the doors for us to adopt management best-practices. If we truly want our sales staff to be effective, we owe them the support to help them be their best. Our success as an organization depends on it.

 

Warm Leads in Cold Weather by Umberto Milletti

Warm Leads in Cold Weather
By Umberto Milletti, Cofounder and CEO of InsideView

As the economy worsens, inbound sales opportunities quickly dry up and sales teams are forced to become increasingly proactive. Just picking up the phone and calling a sales target is generally not enough, but that is particularly true during the economic times we are currently in. Your Rolodex is static; in a down economy, people move around, lay-offs happen, even entire companies disappear. In order for your sales teams to strike up promising conversations in a tough economic climate, they need to have a clear and compelling reason for initially calling.  They need to know who to call (calling somebody after they just blogged about being laid off could lose a business relationship permanently.) Updated inside knowledge of what is going on with the company and the person you are selling to can make the difference between beginning a relationship or ending one.

Let’s face it:  While cold calling is incredibly impersonal, and rarely successful, it is a necessary part of the sales process. In a cold economy though, it becomes much more challenging, and the need for a warm lead is significantly increased. Fortunately, social sites across the Web are hot with the latest activity on a myriad of subjects and industries, and in the process, are publishing enormous amounts of rich, useful content for sales teams. In fact, much of the most insightful and timely content for sales people on the Web can only be found via social Web sites. For example, you can only learn that a mid-level sales manager with whom you used to work at a now-defunct start-up just joined a company you’ve been focusing on through an RSS feed from LinkedIn.  That same update wouldn’t be available from Reuters.

Distilling rich, up-to-date insights from the social Web is a prime example of how Sales 2.0 solutions are revolutionizing the sales process. With the Internet as the new business platform, now all stakeholders – prospects, customers, salespeople and marketers – can connect, learn, plan, analyze, engage, collaborate and conduct business in ways that were not even imaginable a few years ago. Sales 2.0 is about leveraging the wealth of information and interactive possibilities on the Web to accomplish customer engagement rather than just customer-data harvesting. Today’s “smarter” and better informed prospects are requiring sales people to be better versed both in their products and their prospects, rendering Sales 2.0 a two-sided interactive process. It is no longer just who you know that will make business deals happen but “what you know about who you know” along with “when and where you should know it.”

Here are some of the ways that we’ve found that the social Web can make the difference for sales professionals:

Know where your target is actually working (or not): Company moves, promotions, new roles and departments

Know company updates: Did the company that you got denied from last quarter just post record profits? That would be a pretty good time to give ‘em a call back.

Know industry news: Is there a shake-up in one of your target industries that will lead to more opportunities for your company?  What is the commentary going on surrounding the news?

Know it quickly: With all of the examples above, its best if the information can come to you. The sooner the better, so you can have time to properly prepare your sales approach while still getting in early.

By now you’re probably thinking, “This is all great, but who has the time to spend scouring the social Web?”  And you’re right:  There is just too much stuff on the Web to research randomly on your own.  But Sales 2.0 is also about increased productivity and speed and the emerging Sales 2.0 tools accomplish this by intelligently utilizing the massive amount of resources on the Web. For example, at InsideView, our vision was and is to help sales teams save time by integrating our business search and intelligence application, SalesView, directly into the CRM tools they’re already using: Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce and Oracle, just to name a few.  That way, they can get important sales insights from across the social Web while their list of sales targets remains right in front of them.

Customer relationship management is a fundamental element of success in an economy like the current one, and the leads you have need to be good ones.  While the world outside gets colder, remember that in a Sales 2.0 world, warm leads are waiting for you on the social Web.

Umberto Milletti Bio

Umberto Milletti is the cofounder and CEO of InsideView, the pioneering business seach and intelligence service. Before founding InsideView, Umberto was an executive and co-founder of DigitalThink, a leading provider of Web-based corporate training services. Beginning in 1996, Umberto held a number of key roles at DigitalThink, serving as GM, Products; VP, Technology; and VP, Marketing & Product Management. Umberto helped lead DigitalThink to a successful IPO, and ultimately to its sale to Convergys.

 

Sales People are Different from other employees; Focus on Strategic Performance Management for Sales People.

CHICAGO – Sales People are different than the rest of your employees. The biggest difference is that sales people are typically variable compensated; they have a responsibility to bring in the revenue that drives the profit.  This doesn’t make them any more special than your other employees, just different, and you have to treat them differently. 

 

By ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas

 

You can get away with quarterly, semi or annual reviews with most employees but you cannot with sales people. Companies are often fooled into believing that with annual reviews and the right compensation plan or the right incentive package, people will perform to expected standards. The fact is they will not or perhaps cannot. 

 

Yes, sales people must be properly incented but there is much, much more to the equation to get the results you need for your company to hit prescribed targets. Look at managing sales people with a strategic approach; this is a long term approach with built in coaching, that allows you to execute quarter over quarter, year over year.

Strategic Performance management enables the proper alignment of measurement and tracking of individual and team goals to corporate goals. In addition, this strategic approach supports career development, planned turnover and succession planning.

 

When approaching sales performance management strategically, the company’s behavior will change along with that of the sales people.  There will be a greater awareness of sales and those that generate revenue.  Often, an even greater appreciation for what it takes to sell becomes evident.  The sales position should be viewed differently, and an extra emphasis on managing these people should be given.

 

 

 

 

 

·         Strategic performance management drives higher productivity. Manual word documents or spreadsheet performance reviews are dreaded by managers and HR, are rarely done consistently or are in any sort of compliance with company standards. And, they are typically performed annually for the main reason of supporting salary reviews, not strategic. Automating this business process allows for daily performance tracking  and the strategic impact allows managers to focus on actually improving employee and company performance rather than filling out a document to put in a file.

 

 

·         Consistent, accurate compensation plans provide security and trust as well as motivation. A standalone compensation system enforces policy compliance, and can typically build trust with the sales people. But, the system must be tied into your performance management system to track if compensation is driving the behavior you desire.  When combined with strategic performance management, companies can pay employees consistently based on their contributions to the overall success of the organization.

 

·         Goal alignment provides for measurement and motivation. Your business will benefit from having sales people focused on and accomplishing appropriate leading indicators that are aligned to corporate objectives. This is not possible without technology to automate and objectively align sales people to the rest of the organization. It is just too hard to track and manage without technology.

  

·         Measuring, tracking and reporting keeps sales people on track.  Good sales people are interested in how they are doing, all of the time.  Poor sales people don’t want to be measured. There is typically a common thread with good or great sales people that want to improve their job skills and advance or make more money.  By tracking, measuring and reporting you will know who these people are and can build a stronger team.  Technology tools to measure competencies and define successes are useful in helping sales people  develop their long-term goals and strategies.  Organizations who take this step are or will be far ahead of their competition.

 

·         Approach sales coaching with rigor.  Sales people can learn, just like great athletes can learn.  Just read about any great athlete in history and behind them are lessons, coaches, practice, technique, continuous learning.  Sales people must be coached and you must take it seriously as a company.  You must make sure your managers have the data to coach, that they understand how important it is to coach. The Conference Board of Executives cites a 17% improvement in revenue when sales people are consistently coached. Make this a priority.

 

Don’t make it hard.  Using a system and defining the strategy will involve integration with other systems and this is indeed key.  But integration should not be a show stopper.  Strategic sales leaders who have lofty goals such as increasing sales, aligning sales people with business objectives, paying for performance, managing out poor performers and  ultimately implementing sales performance processes that have a direct and measurable effect on the bottom line do not let integration get in their way. These savvy folks have come to realize that an integrated approach is necessary and work through it. If properly understood and data minimized to reflect only those attributes that affect the outcome, integration becomes a non issue.

 

The Strategic Sales Performance space is growing at over 40% according to Ventana Research, Gartner and other industry analyst.  Currently it is estimated that over $3 billion dollars annually is spent on technology to support sales performance and as companies budget for 2009 there is a strong indication that businesses are taking this process seriously.

 

It is time to look differently at your sales team and take the steps to initiate the process to finally get consistent positive results week over week and quarter over quarter.

 

By ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas

 

 

Know the answers on building a Sales Effectiveness Program.

 

Patrick Stakenas, President and CEO ForceLogix www.forcelogix.com

 

If you are a Senior Sales Executive and like most, need to drive more revenue out of more of your team, put the process in place with your managers and you will see the results:

 

Getting started on a Sales Effectiveness initiative; here are five questions every Senior Sales Executive should be able to answer… and if you can’t.. consider the benefits if you could!

 

Read below and decide if this makes sense. If it does, lend your sales managers a hand and start a sales effectiveness initiative.

 

1.                  What’s holding back your B and C players from driving more revenue and attaining quota?

 

2.                  Do you believe that coaching really has the impact that industry leaders have proven to be true and what leading analysts have studied, surveyed and documented?

 

3.                  What would it mean to have access to detailed rep. information on skill level, selling ability, product knowledge, marketing messaging or key leading sales indicators in real time?

 

4.                  How important is it to understand who is moving up, who is moving down, or who is not moving at all before the results come in?

 

5.                  Do the excuses of CRM or SFA challenges or other competing IT priorities trump the opportunity to improve team performance today?

 

In recent studies done by Ventana, Sirius, Nightingale Conant and the Conference Board of Executives, they found a common dilemma — a tremendous need for a sales performance and effectiveness plan, which is often thwarted by a lack of resources. This isn’t surprising considering the current statistics: According to the Bersin & Associates Performance Management 2006 Study, “only 32% of organizations have a consistent, enterprise-wide approach to this important business process.” And almost 90% still do not use specialized tools or software services to help get the job done.

 

Even though most senior sales executives are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the possibility of implementing Sales Performance Effectiveness (SPE) it has been cited that internal time, resources, and budget as enormous barriers.

 

Here is the Reality: Implementing a Sales Performance Effectiveness plan actually may be the most cost-effective way to improve the results of your B and C players and remove the burden from your IT and HR teams to support the information you need to get the job done and improve the performance of your sales team.

 

The questions you need to answer:

 

1.                 What’s holding back your B and C players from driving more revenue and attaining quota?

 

Could it be a lack of attention to sales drivers and leading indicators?

 

Ultimately, a well-functioning and appropriately-used process can deliver real, bottom-line business results through understanding why people are not performing. Paying close attention, using automation, to track the critical leading indicators will give you and your managers a clear view of what is really going on with every individual and every team.  Understanding these indicators and tracking, monitoring and measuring them provide insight on if a salesperson is doing the right things to get them to greater revenue.

 

2.                 Do you believe that coaching really has the impact that industry leaders have proven to be true and what leading analysts have studied, surveyed and documented?

 

Fact is fact.. Coaching works, question is what do you do about it and how do you get consistent coaching and tracking of the coaching events.

 

Studies from the Center for Management and Organizational Effectiveness (CMOE) and the Sales Executive Council (SEC) who have analyzed over 2,500 sales professionals and as many as 500 sales managers determined coaching has a significant impact on sales results. 

 

Understanding this and implementing a coaching process to track, manage and monitor these results provides significantly greater value – up to 17% for your B and C players cites the CMOE.

 

The SEC study also revealed that the amount of sales coaching a person receives drove greater performance and had a direct link to retention. These studies and others have also drawn strong conclusions that tracking the individual being coached increases the level of engagement and overall effort given by these individuals on a daily basis as they can see themselves getting better and are acknowledged more often by both peers and managers.  This translates to increased revenue and profitability.

 

Establishing a coaching environment and providing the tools necessary to track and manage can take the results even higher. But what if they only improved your B and C players by 10%, or even just 3%?  Chances are that would still drive a huge increase in your numbers across the board. You would know who is coaching, who managers are spending their time with, and what they are coaching on.

 

You would know if it is really having an impact, the subjective nature of coaching becomes objective and actionable, it becomes real.  HR, marketing, senior management, supporting functions and everyone in the company will know that you are doing everything possible to drive more revenue to the company and that you care about your people.

 

3.                 What would it mean to have access to detailed rep. information on skill level, selling ability, product knowledge, marketing messaging or key leading sales indicators in real time?

 

Could it mean that you would finally have a simple way to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your team and how to correct them without having to rely on the IT, HR or finance team every time you are looking for information?

 

Often the IT department will tell you they will deliver this information… but it never comes or it comes on their terms. Don’t be held hostage: the need to view and access to sales rep. information on sales performance data for actionable insight is a must. You should expect to have detailed, rolled up information that gives you the power to be able to make decisions and realistically report to higher management on why thing are the way they are.

  

4.                 How important is it to understand who is moving up, who is moving down, or who is not moving at all, before the results come in?

 

Unlike most senior sales executives, you may be clairvoyant and know each week over week, month over month or quarter over quarter who is going to hit their numbers, but most senior managers do not know until the results hit.

 

OK, there are that select few, that 20%, who deliver for you time and time again. But what about the 80% that does not. Again, we are talking about the B and C players and understanding where they are headed is critical in order to improve team performance.

 

Managers who are activity engaged with their team and are using data and coaching on this data, based on the criterion you or your sales training or operations group have established will see who is engaging and getting better well before the results come in.

 

Chronic underperformers will be called out continuously as they will be measured  against the leading indicator criterion: are they making the calls? are they calling on the right prospects? do they understand the product or service? can they deliver the latest marketing message? are they at least working towards getting better?

 

Managers will be freed up from the tasks of gathering information to know who is getting better or worse. Accenture cites that sales managers spend 2 hours per day hunting for data, 50% of which is useless.  Managers will have the opportunity to spend the time with the people who need help, they can gauge and adjust to upward positive changes and have the knowledge and documentation to take action with those who will not or cannot perform to expectation. 

 

5.                 Do the excuses of CRM or SFA challenges or other competing IT priorities trump the opportunity to improve team performance today?

 

Let’s face it, this is holding you back.  Your livelihood is dependent upon your ability to deliver, but the priorities of the day are preventing you from taking action.  

 

Every day, more and more senior sales executives are coming to terms with the fact that CRM and BI tools have helped with efficiency, but it is very hard to link it back to growth and optimization of the sales talent. 

 

Even with the are countless articles from analysts and consultants that support this fact that  tracking, measuring, monitoring and coaching will drive 15% to 30%+ productivity improvement in your B and C players, you let IT, HR and others prevent you from doing what is right. Maybe it is a convenient excuse to dodge accountability?

 

 CSO Insights, Accenture, Bain, The Corporate Executive Board, Ventana, Sirius and countless others have cited the importance of getting grounded with their sales management, and it is time to wake up to this.

 

Patrick Stakenas, President and CEO ForceLogix www.forcelogix.com

 

 

The Cost of CRM Project Failure, by Richard Boardman

The cost of CRM project failure…
By Richard Boardman

I get a bit blasé about the importance of selecting the right vendor. MyCustomer.com is due to publish an opinion piece that I wrote about CRM consultants not just being about vendor selection. And I have been known to suggest from time to time that effective requirements definition is actually more important. I think this is partly because we get to work with excellent vendors and avoid the incompetent. And while I’d love to say everything works perfectly all of the time, that would not be entirely true, but we tend to be dealing with hiccups rather than major issues.

However from time to time I’m reminded as to the price organizations pay when they make a misjudged purchase decision. I made a call this week to see how the second phase of a project we’ve been working on had panned out. The client had first involved us a couple of years earlier wanting help turning round a failing project. They had installed a supposedly front/office back office solution which had been partially delivered substantially over budget, considerably late, and with a wealth of missing functionality. The internal project team was working silly hours to make the best out of a bad lot, while having to endure the inevitable finger pointing that only failed IT projects can generate.

The impact of the failing system was widely felt. Not only was senior management embroiled in a time consuming battle to at least get things on an even keel, the lack of a stable IT infrastructure was impacting customer service, and key new product releases were being undermined. Overall the ‘system’ disrupted operations for about two years.

While the temptation was to throw the system out entirely, many of the elements of the system were so bespoke and critical to ongoing business continuity, that this wasn’t a practical option. We helped the company install a mid-market CRM package to take over the front office functions, integrated with those back office functions that worked, and have been steadily helping them steadily migrate functionality from the failing system into the new CRM environment.

The vendor we selected to implement the CRM system has done a great job, and the client’s confidence in using and implementing technology has steadily increased. The fault for the failing project lay exclusively with the ‘rogue’ vendor, but inevitably in these circumstances there’s a tendency to blame yourself as well, and as a result there was a creeping lack of belief within the client as to their ability to implement technology successfully.

Rather coincidentally another client we later worked with had a similar encounter with the same ‘rogue’ vendor. After two years trying to implement a system the client simply gave up and wrote their own solution. The cost of the episode was enormous and the psychological scars are deep.

It’s perhaps the impact on confidence that project failures create that may ultimately be the most damaging aspect. In an era where corporate success and failure will increasingly be determined by an organization’s ability to harness technology, it will be the confident that ultimately prosper.

The ‘rogue’ vendor is still trading and still gaining (and presumably fleecing) new customers. The laws of economics don’t seem to apply well to IT companies perhaps. We seem to tolerate incompetence in IT far more than in any other field of life. For anyone looking to make a major investment in technology I’d strongly advise they perform their due diligence well, the cost of project failure may be bigger than you realize.

Richard Boardman is something of a grizzled veteran of the CRM space having worked in the industry for the last 12 years and having been involved in implementing over 300 CRM systems. In 2004 he went from poacher to gamekeeper, and left one of the UK’s leading CRM vendors to set up Mareeba CRM Consulting with the pretty simple objective of helping organizations get a considerably better return on investment from CRM technology than was the traditional norm.