Will You Make It Through The Current Economic Turmoil?

Part 3 - Process Power: Predictable, Consistent and Repeatable Selling!

In reality, the majority of selling organizations don’t have a sales process that was designed specifically for them and for the way their customers prefer to buy. Of those companies that do have a formal sales process, less than 25% of their sales team follow or use it. Typically if a sales organization has 10 sales people, then it is very likely that they would have 10 different selling processes happening within their organization. What other part of your organization would use multiple, untested and ad-hoc processes? It sounds almost ludicrous doesn’t it?

Yet even with all the research and evidence today, proving the undeniable value of having a well constructed, customer centric, and tested sales performance process, still there are sales forces operating out there in this harsh economy winging it! I guess it’s a bit like smoking. Even with all the evidence to the contrary people continue to smoke. However if you are reading this article then you are not one of those sales leaders, so congratulations.

If you don’t have a formalised sales process, and everyone is just doing their own thing, how would it even be possible to create a team of people who are all pulling to the same direction in the same way? A process is usually defined as a particular course of action intended to achieve a result. Let me prove to you the powerful impact of having a consistent systematic approach for performing both product and service sales.

Right now go and find yourself a complete pack of playing cards. Go on I’ll wait! DON”T JUST KEEP READING GET OF YOUR BUTT AND GET A PACK OF CARDS! I promise you a powerful learning experience, one that will change your perception of how sales should be made forever. So stop reading and GO GET A PACK OF CARDS!

Great you’re back.

Step 1 Now first remove the jokers and then make sure that the pack of cards is set up separating each of the four suits.
Step 2 Now arrange the cards in their respective suits, from ace ...in order through to King. In other words the order of each suit should be, Ace, 2, 3, 4,.....9, 10, Jack, Queen, King.
Step 3 Now arrange the deck of cards, one on top of the other, in the following order,: Spades, Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts
Step 4 Carefully cut the pack 13 times. (The simplest form of the cut is done by taking, roughly, the top one-half of the cards, and placing them on the table. Then complete the cut by placing the remaining bottom portion on top of the cards that have been cut off.)
Step 5 Having cut the cards 13 times carefully lay them face down out in 13 piles:

 Keep loading each of the 13 piles maintain the same order. In other words as you count your 14th card will be placed face down on pile #1 , card 15 on pile 2, 16 on 3 etc . Maintain the same order until all the cards have been equally distributed. If you have completed this step correctly you should have 13 piles of 4 cards each.
Step 6 Now turn over each of the piles and if you have followed the process correctly you should have 13 piles, each made up of their own numbers. In other words you will see that you have a pile of 4’s and a pile of Kings’ and a pile of 9’s etc.

Now how did that happen? The truth is I don’t really know. I’m sure that some of you real clever types have worked out how and why. Me, I have never bothered to find out how the trick works, I just know that it does. I have done it in seminars and workshops, over the phone and now in this newsletter. It’s a bit like electricity, I don’t know how it really works but I can turn it on whenever I need it. So to with a well constructed selling process. A well engineered, customer centric and tested sales process will deliver consistent selling results as long as all the sales steps are followed.

Process centric sales teams out strip non process centric sellers in all key metrics measured
There is an enormous body of well documented research which demonstrates conclusively that process centric sales teams out strip non process centric sellers in all key metrics measured. In a previous newsletter I referred to the latest research from the *CSO Insights' 2008 Sales Performance Optimization Report shows that 'process-centric' sales teams outperform non-process-centric teams for every measurable metric.

* (CSO Insights is a research firm that specializes in measuring the effectiveness of today's sales and marketing organizations. They benchmark the challenges companies are facing and assess how they are using people, process, technology and knowledge to optimize their sales performance. Each year CSO Insights survey thousands of Chief Sales Officers to learn the challenges they see as most critical. )

On the basis of those numbers, evaluating your current selling process performance would make good business sense! How do you know if your current sales process is in need of a shake up?  What Are the Warning Signs That Your Sales Process May No Longer Be Effective?

"There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process enginnering would not work in the sales process" 
- Quality expert Joseph Juran

What Makes For An Effective Sales Performance Process?
A well thought out and manageable Sales Performance Process is simply a way of mapping out and testing all the steps, actions, tools and skills required to take a sale from qualifying the opportunity to closing, follow-up and service. You should define and standardize your company’s sales process based on best practices within your team, your industry, and the sales field in general. As managers, we are taught that:

• What gets measured gets done
• You can’t manage what you can’t measure
• If you can’t measure it, you can’t understand it
• If you can’t understand it, you can’t improve it.

The role of the sales leader is to support their salespeople in successfully achieving their sales goals. Therefore, by documenting, replicating and reinforcing the “best practices” and behaviors of the best sales performers in your organization/industry, you will create a predictable and measurable road map for your sales team to follow, thus ensuring their best chance for success, more often.

Whilst a well defined Sales Performance Process is not a total panacea, nonetheless it will help your individual salespeople to more effectively and efficiently:

• Identify and qualify leads
• Find more opportunities for repeat business among your existing customers
• More consistently position the unique value that your company and its product and services can deliver, in contrast to the competition
• Discover your customers’ true “pain points” and map their needs to your products or services
• Identify and deliver convincing proof that your products can meet those needs
• Assess the revenue potential of a given customer
• Negotiate and close more sales
• Build stronger relationships with customers and business partners
• Follow-up after the sale, helping to drive customer satisfaction – and generate repeat business and referrals.

An effective Sales Performance Process will identify and provide you and your sales team with critical success milestones as well as the specific and measurable actions required to reach those targets and move the sale forward. Sales leaders who impel their sales team to use a tested, standardized Sales Performance Process to leverage their efforts are far more likely to sustain competitive advantage over companies that are reliant on one or two sales rainmakers.

Some of the other reasons for having a well thought-out, customer centric sales process include:

• Seller and buyer risk management
• Standardized customer interaction during the sale
• Scalable revenue generation
• Repeatable sales process executed consistently across each transaction
• Process helps you build a sales team of consistent predictable sales performers
• Offers a road map for advancing a sale to closing the sale – knowing the current status of your business pipeline.
• Deals move smoothly through the pipeline – knowing at any point in time, what stage of the process each of your customers and prospects are in
• Strong process helps reduce sales call reluctance
• Speeds up ramp up time for new sales team members
• Improves forecast accuracy and assist your team to plan their month/quarter
• Assists in identifying potential problems before they occur
• A formal sales process allows for ongoing improvement, to dial in success.
• Offers a host of well-tested design and improvement tools from other successful disciplines and process oriented industries
• Provides the sales leader and sales team with the ability to measure effective activity and success.
• And so much more..

For a simple, step by step method of creating your own sales performance process, I have outlined the recipe in my book, Bulletproof your Sales Team, The 5 Strategies Guaranteed to Turbo-Boost your Sales Team's Results! which is a high-leverage resource for solving today’s most pressing sales and sales-team related questions.

Put your team way out in front of the pack with a well engineered selling process.
An effective Sales Performance Process is a little like one’s health. Our health and well-being is typically taken for granted and not properly appreciated when everything seems to be working as it should. However, when our health fails, that’s when we sit up and take notice. The same could be said for your current Sales Performance Process. Whilst it may have the appearance of working well, a crisis may be just around the corner.

When there is a sudden economic downturn and everyone is tightening their belts, and the easy sales have all dried up, the market will begin to quickly sort out “the wheat from the chaff!” Those selling organizations that have invested the time and effort it takes to design and test an effective Sales Performance Process will put themselves way out in front of their competition.

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