Times are tough for many businesses and cutbacks, slim budgets, and often restructuring are changing how organizations tackle business. Corporate leadership often overlooks the one place they could fuel growth rather than slimming down for cost savings. That is in sales organizations.
The sales groups within a company are its lifeblood and are what generate income and move products and services. By honing these sales groups into lean, mean selling machines that target new clients, retain current ones, and improve margins all around, a corporation can stop playing the “keep up” game and start succeeding without playing games.
As with many things, the devil’s in the details. Three things are the best focus for the CEO or other leadership: Building a leaner selling machine, increasing analytics and their use, and motivate the sales team towards success.
=== A Leaner Selling Machine
The lean, mean selling machine comes from getting past the fear of changing the sales force during hard times. When times are tough, sales need to increase and the only way to make that happen is to change how they’re doing things. Leaning the sales force doesn’t just mean cutting costs and budgets. That comes with improvements that make for a more efficient, faster-moving sales machine, not the other way around.
A rule of thumb is that for every 10% in increase revenues, you should be able to see the same amount in cost savings on the back-end. This happens by re-focusing your sales force on selling. Forget the “perks” and “extras” that often come with the job – cut back on distractions like sales dinners, short-term bonuses and rewards, and the like. Instead, re-focus them on selling by pushing for larger, longer-term rewards (quarterly or year-end bonuses, for example) that seem larger to the members of the sales team, but are actually lower cost in the long run.
Finally, speed up processes that may be stagnated. Nothing should be sacred here. Look at everything in the approach-to-closure cycle and hone it down to its essentials, cutting out the fat.
=== Utilize Those Analytics
Knowing what is being done where, what is effective and how, and when something will work is vital to the sales process. Just as Macy’s doesn’t advertise Christmas sales in June, so your sales force shouldn’t be working routes that are not generally effective in June, but are strong in December. Cut out the ineffective tactics and avenues and focus on those that work well and improve those that could do better.
Sales is not an art form, it’s a process that can be analyzed. Just like operations and human resources submits reports analyzing their processes and performance, so should sales. Demand that your sales team leaders provide strategic plans and goals, then hold them accountable for delivery.
If your organization has few analytic tools for sales, spend the money to get them. Nothing is more important to success than sales and nothing boosts sales like knowing what works and what doesn’t.
=== Motivating the Sales Team
Touched on earlier, motivating the team is about more than throwing money and rewards at them. While these can be effective, so can a team-focused atmosphere and a knowledge that they are not separate from, but are part of the entire corporate team.
Sales needs the guidance of overall corporate strategy to tell them where to focus. Marketing and corporate intelligence provide the knowledge of the market, IT provides the tools, R&D provides the products and services that are and will be coming, customer service provides the repeat business and upsell opportunities, and sales provides the revenue. Working as a team, all of the facets of the corporation can come together to jump ahead.
Eliminate the infighting and build a corporate team.