{"id":17574,"date":"2017-04-18T08:54:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T12:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opexsociety.org\/?p=17574"},"modified":"2018-08-07T10:10:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T14:10:54","slug":"bring-operational-excellence-sales-salespeople-will-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opexsociety.org\/body-of-knowledge\/bring-operational-excellence-sales-salespeople-will-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Bring Operational Excellence to Sales (And Why Your Salespeople Will Love You For It)"},"content":{"rendered":"

How will your company reach its revenue and profitability goals in the short term? If you are growing now, how will you sustain<\/em> that growth in the future? If answering these questions is a struggle, you are not alone.<\/p>\n

In many\u00a0B2B companies sales productivity has been declining in\u00a0recent years. A study by CSO Insights<\/a>\u00a0said only 55.8% of salespeople made their annual quota in 2016 (down from 63% in 2012). \u00a0It is now common for\u00a075% of deals in sales pipelines to never close, according to\u00a0Accenture. 40% turnover among sales teams is\u00a0common. Sales forecasts have become even less accurate.<\/p>\n

Some of the causes for these declines are not in a company\u2019s control.\u00a0\u00a0The Internet has changed the way companies buy. Some industries suffer from declining markets<\/a>.\u00a0Plenty of B2B companies struggle trying to\u00a0adjust\u00a0to changes like these.<\/p>\n

And, B2B companies are not standing still.\u00a0Sales and marketing management magazines describe lots of\u00a0sales training, CRM, content marketing, and other\u00a0initiatives. CSO Insights promotes\u00a0“” as a strategy. Consulting companies like Accenture promote\u00a0“agile selling<\/a>.” And there are many others.<\/p>\n

The thing is, initiatives like these have been going on for years.\u00a0Researchers and consultants\u00a0blithely toss\u00a0out unprovable statements like this\u00a0one:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn companies where social selling\u00a0aligns\u00a0with
\nmarketing and selling strategies,
\nclose ratios increase by 16%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scratch the surface of such statements, and the\u00a0measurements fall apart immediately. What exactly, is “social selling”? To what measurable thing does “marketing and selling strategy” refer to?\u00a0How is the \u201cclose ratio\u201d measured?<\/p>\n

If sales organizations are unable to measure things that cause improvement, how can they predict, much less sustain it?<\/p>\n

It is Time for Sales and Marketing Management to Get Real<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Statements like that described above fail the first\u00a0rule of rationality: Define Your Terms.\u00a0<\/em>People in\u00a0most B2B companies toss around words and phrases like these as though\u00a0everyone knows what they are talking about.\u00a0That is unfortunate.<\/p>\n

It is also why so many companies “work on” initiatives for years without producing discernable results. Like a dead fish floating down stream, companies\u00a0may\u00a0appear to be making progress as markets expand.<\/p>\n

A senior executive at a billion dollar company admitted to me privately his company\u00a0had nothing to show for\u00a06 years pursuing \u201cSelling Cycle Speed.\u201d\u00a0Imagine the impact their\u00a0\u201cSales Competencies,\u201d \u201cCoaching,\u201d or\u00a0\u201cAccount Planning\u201d initiatives had. (None!) Here is a dirty little secret among companies that consult to sales organizations: Their vaunted clients have no ability to measure anything systemically, like the financial impact of changes in how work is accomplished.<\/p>\n

What could cause such\u00a0ongoing failure to improve sales and marketing productivity? Simple. Someone, somewhere is not in contact with reality.<\/p>\n

Executives working in manufacturing must\u00a0produce ROI and productivity gains measured systemically, in hard dollars. Executives working in sales have not learned how to do this. As a result, management’s words and phrases “float” above the realities salespeople deal with.<\/p>\n

It should be no wonder that\u00a0the best salespeople operate outside\u00a0of whatever process is\u00a0in place. They get away with it because they provide the organization’s supply of oxygen – customers with orders. Thank goodness!<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the sales forecast is still useless. The pipeline is still weak. Sales people still work\u00a0overtime on\u00a0prospects the company doesn\u2019t want. And there is there\u2019s huge waste in the organization.<\/p>\n

Worse, initiatives that get implemented \u2013 like sales training, sales enablement, and especially \u201csales process\u201d \u2013 tend to ignore salespeople\u2019s real<\/em> problems. In fact, that is the\u00a0primary reasons they fail to achieve measurable, sustainable improvements in the first place.<\/em><\/p>\n

When you see a rat trapped in a maze, you know the reason the rat is trapped is it\u2019s own limited awareness and knowledge. Likewise, most sales and marketing organizations have not identified what actually improves productivity.<\/p>\n

Unlike their manufacturing counterparts, they do not know how to apply scientific measurement and management principles.\u00a0They simply continue making assumptions, and exhorting their team to work harder.<\/p>\n

To be fair, it is not entirely the sales and marketing department\u2019s fault. The Internet, globalization, and mobile devices are accelerating changes in how customers buy. Weaknesses in sales and marketing management are revealed when a company struggles to keep up.<\/p>\n

Regardless, real market progress only happens when companies out-perform their competitors. And, companies can only out-perform their competitors when they adopt scientific management principles.<\/p>\n

And that<\/em> begins with respect for the reality of what you are dealing with \u2013 especially your marketing and salespeople.<\/p>\n

Bringing Operational Excellence to Sales<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Typical sales and marketing executives start from the wrong footing when trying to improve.\u00a0They decide\u00a0(somehow) what solution they want,\u00a0and then begin to implement it (sometimes via outside consultants). Claude Bardy, of BCE Europartners, describes an al all too common experience:<\/p>\n

I was running the French sales organization of a European company. Corporate decided to have a uniform sales process for all countries, and designed such a process with major involvement from the field and key account sales people located in the headquarters\u2019 country. Corporate then felt the sales process had full legitimacy. Unfortunately, it was rejected by the regions, and corporate couldn\u2019t understand why. Cultural differences were part of the explanation, and had to be addressed.<\/p>\n

By contrast, a scientific approach\u00a0engages\u00a0the best minds from across the relevant\u00a0departments. This is essential, since sales problems look different to field salespeople than to key account managers, or headquarters executives. Likewise, since sales is a production system, it is critical to decide what needs measuring. And to avoid the problem Claude Bardy describes, this team of volunteers must also decide what needs to be consistent across the sales production system, and what can be left to local decision making, and why.<\/p>\n

Usually, this work is quite different than any the participants have experienced before. That\u2019s because they learn to apply a structured, scientific method. Everything they do must be tied to observable reality.<\/p>\n

The Method for Improving<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So, what does this method look like, and how is it different from what people are used to? \u00a0In its simplest form, that method requires the team to answer three questions with some degree of rigor[1]<\/a>:<\/p>\n