An Optimized Sales Force Doesn’t Happen by Accident.

An optimized sales force does not happen by accident. In fact, a large percentage of sales organizations we encounter do not have a truly scalable model that can endure during good and bad times. So, for the purposes of talking about this success factor let us detail what is missing and let you work the other way to improve your situation.

Lack of consistency (a.k.a. planning, process) is a major issue. In an informal survey we performed with companies having less than 250 employees, about 50% did not use a CRM (customer relationship management) system to track sales opportunities. Sales representatives were disorganized, sales leads were missed, and opportunities languished in the pipeline.

The negative impact was not as evident during good times but with a thinner sales funnel during tough times, it becomes glaringly obvious. There has been a significant push over the last decade to move sales organizations toward a value-based selling model.

The importance of this is more evident now than ever before. If you are not familiar with the concept is essentially boils down to connecting the value of your product or service to the end-result-benefit it provides to your customer. For example, your product “X” may have a variety of features and benefits but it is up to your salespeople to uncover which features and benefits help the customers business. Does it increase the productivity of people? Increase manufacturing efficiency? Minimize downtime? Add revenue to the top line? This list is long and is unique to each customer. Referring back to the previous paragraph – performed well, this moves your company to the front of the line as your customer hands out purchase orders.