Building World-

Class Sales
Organizations

Four Key Performance Areas the World-Class Sales

Organizations Excel in & What You Can Learn From
Them

1
 Building World-Class Sales Organizations
Introduction

Selling in this flattened world has not been easy. Powerful economic forces
such as outsourcing and off shoring, efficient workflow technologies, free
movement of capital and expertise, and advent of internet have made the
markets more dynamic, more complex and more uncertain. Even the best
innovations are being commoditized faster than ever and differentiating an
organization from the rest is becoming tougher.

Building a competitive advantage that is sustainable is the major challenge

every company is facing in these turbulent markets. Growing revenues in a
consistent manner and sustaining that performance over a long time is ever
CEO’s primary concern. Only by building a world-class sales organization can
those objectives be achieved. More than the price and the product quality, the
sales effectiveness is the factor that most influences the buying decisions of the
customers.1 So enhancing the effectiveness of your sales force and building a
world-class sales organization is the way to gain competitive advantage and
sustainable growth.

This white paper analyses the common attributes of world-class sales

organizations and provides insights into what sets them apart from their
competitors. It identifies the processes and methods used by top sales
organizations, which can be used by chief sales managers, VPs of sales and
CEOs to enhance the effectiveness of their own sales forces and turn them into
world-class sales organizations.

The Situation

While sales organizations have enjoyed healthy pipelines during economy

booms, now they must manage the pressures of reduced budgets and stagnating
or reducing revenues and market share. Increased competition, reduced product
life cycles, and fractured buyer-seller relationships further complicate the
situation.

In spite of these challenges, the sales organizations must be able to increase

their performance and show better revenues. The management must undertake
all it takes to improve the sales force effectiveness to survive and excel in the
marketplace.

1
http://www.challysa.co.za/The-Sales-Professional-is-the-Sale.aspx

2
The Challenge
Challenges Faced by
The key challenge before chief sales managers
Salespeople
and CEOs is to equip their sales forces with the
necessary skills and processes required to make
them deliver high performance needed to
achieve a sustained competitive advantage. 1. Reduced
budgets and
Knowing what the world-class sales increased
organizations have been doing and targets
implementing their best practices in your sales 2. Increasing
force is will help you achieve the revenue goals competition
and strategic objectives of the organization. 3. Shorter product
life-cycles
What Makes a Sales Organization World-Class? 4. Increasing
complexity of
World-class here does not denote the the products and
geographical spread but the quality, standards services
and of course, the results of high performing 5. Increasing use
sales organizations. While it is easy to identify of technology in
the world-class sales organizations, the sales and sales
challenge is to understand how they got there. management
Sales volume of the companies does not provide 6. Lack of
the complete picture of the health of the sales integration
organization. World-class sales organizations between sales
are outstanding due to their ability to deliver processes
high sales performance on a sustained basis. 7. Poor sales skills
Such organizations show 8. Lack of clear
roles and
ƒ Substantial increase in revenues on a responsibilities
year-on-year basis 9. Lack of
ƒ High revenues per customer or high alignment
account billings between cross-
ƒ High rates of new customer/client functional teams
acquisition 10. Poor
ƒ High returns on sales investment understanding
ƒ Ability to sustain performance over an of customer
extended period of time needs
ƒ Customer-driven sales processes and
customer-centric organizational culture

3
 Their ability to excel in many sales process areas and a culture of continuously
improvising performance in every area produce outstanding results year after
year and create competitive advantage.

Here are four key performance areas where world-class sales organizations
outperform the rest to gain competitive advantage. Studying them would
provide insights on how you can do the same with your sales organization.

Key Performance Area 1 – Creating and Prioritizing

Sales Opportunities

A 2009 sales performance study involving over 21000 sales professionals

covering 20 industries by the HR firm Miller Heiman2 reveals that 89 percent
of the world-class sales organizations follow a well-defined methodologies to
identify, analyse, create and prioritise which sales opportunities to pursue. On
the other hand, nearly half of the organizations that have been designated as
non-world-class do not have a template to identify the best opportunities.

High performing sales organizations have a proactive and focused approach to

making the most of the available opportunities. Nearly 91 percent of the world-
class sales organizations reported that they have a well-defined system in place
to identify their ideal customer and that they design sales processes, strategies
and efforts around that customer, thus increasing the odds of compelling such
customers to buy products or services from them.

We have a standardized mechanism in place

to identify and qualify opportunities.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
89% 37%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

2
2009 Sales Best Practice Study -
http://www.millerheiman.com/research_center/sales_best_practices_study/index.html

4
 Such an approach has many benefits. It lets the sales force understand the needs
of the targeted customers and offer more relevant value-added services. Instead
of finding customers for the adopted strategy these world-class organizations
find strategies that best fit the customers. They do not push products, instead
they solve the problems of the customers. The result is increased close ratios,
shorter sales cycles, high customer satisfaction levels and lower sales expenses.

On the other hand, low performing sales forces have no or poorly defined
mechanism to identify the right kind of opportunities and waste time and
energy in pushing products and services that offer less-than-expected value to
the customers. Their salespeople are trained to ‘push a product’ than ‘offer a
solution’.

High performing sales organizations also tend to have prioritise their

opportunities and train their sales forces to seize them. By segmenting and
training their salespeople to build their expertise in the high-priority areas, they
increase the sales effectiveness.

What You Should Learn

1. Devise a consistent and visible process to identify opportunities. This helps

to allocate the right kind of resources in the right opportunities. Pursue only
those opportunities that you are likely to win and excel at. The ideal
opportunities are the ones that complement to the core competencies of the
organization. Focusing on quality, instead of quality, is more effective in
the long run.
2. Align your sales and marketing departments to successfully pursue
qualified opportunities. Expend focussed effort to understand the market
segment, customer profile, consumer behavioural patterns and your
competition in the same segment.
3. Account reviewing and benchmarking can provide insights into how your
organization captured an opportunity and why it missed the rest. Win/Loss
research into your past product line, service offerings and those of your
competition lets you identify the reasons customers buy or didn’t buy from
your organization.
4. Use that data to finetune your sales processes to better identify and win
opportunities in the marketplace. Standardize the best possible methodology
and stick to it. The process itself need not be the best in the industry but its
execution should be. The methodology should be fairly understood without
any ambiguity across the sales force from frontline sales to the VP of sales.

5
 5. As your core competencies develop and the profile of the ideal customer
changes along with the market conditions, new and better criteria for
identifying and managing opportunities must be instilled into the
organization’s standardized sales processes.

Key Performance Area 2 – Managing Opportunities with

Effective Sales Processes

World-class sales organizations have high closing rates when it comes to

winning sales and contracts. They follow elaborate and complex processes to
offer value-added solutions to the customers. They assign the necessary
resources needed for securing sales opportunity, understand the issues and
needs of the customers, identify the important decision-makers involved in the
buying cycle and deliver the solutions that customers and clients would die for.
And to do that, the world-class sales forces have developed, perfected and
mastered effective sales processes that run across the organization.

We completely understand the needs of the

customers before proposing a solution.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
93% 50%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

World-class sales forces are better than other organizations in understanding

the needs of the customers before proposing a solution.3 Their understanding of
both the problem and solution is so deep that 70 percent of world-class sales
forces manage to get more value in return even when significant price
concessions are given away.4

3
Growth Strategies for Sales Leaders in Complex Selling Environments - http:// millerheiman.com/
4
2009 Sales Best Practice Study -
http://www.millerheiman.com/research_center/sales_best_practices_study/index.html

6
 All their sales activities and sales processes
begin and end with the customers as the focal Why You Need
point. Right from identifying a potential lead to
Sales Processes to
making a phone call to sending a thank you note
after signing a deal there exists a standardised Sell?
process in these high performing sales Well-defined and
organizations. On the other hand, more than 60 standardized sales
percent of low performing sales organizations do processes improve
not have a standardised protocol even for consistency,
making sales calls.5 predictability,
scalability,
High performing sales organizations do not sell measurability, and
products; they sell solutions. By aligning their sustainability.
sales processes to the buying processes of the
clients or the needs of the customers, these It helps you measure,
manage, improvise and
organizations offer ‘strategic solutions’ to the
understand everything
clients and turn the clients into ‘strategic
that goes on in
buyers’. Such an approach gives more access to achieving high
the senior level executives and others who customer satisfaction
influence buying decisions. No wonder, their levels.
closing rates are 32 percent better than other
sales organizations.6 Selling solutions in the
present day markets
Do not mistake standardised sales processes for needs cross-functional
rote learning and sticking to the book. High team effort and
performing sales forces continuously benchmark coordinated effort. And
their processes and leverage on the new tools to this needs a process.
improve the overall sales effectiveness. Sales management is
actually sales processes
High performing sales forces understand that
management. Following
there is no one size that fits all. They segment
processes improves
the market or their customers for better targeting predictability. Since
and effective communication.7 They also they create a lot of data,
segment their salespeople and train to be experts you easily see fix things
in the chosen domain. This also enables them to that have gone wrong
focus more on high value (remember 80/20 rule) and finetune the things
customers or clients. that work.

5
2009 Sales Best Practice Study -
http://www.millerheiman.com/research_center/sales_best_practices_study/index.html
6
Sales Performance Survey 2006 – http://www.millerheiman.com/
7
http://www.chally.com/wcs/sales-growth/sales-force-gap.html

7

3 Most Mission
Critical Sales Process
Practices
In a 2008 survey of sales best
practices by Jim Dickies and
CSO Insights that covered
more than 250 companies,
senior sales executives ranked
the following three as the
most important.
Note that these areas have
strong correlation with sales
processes and the
organization’s ability to
manage opportunities.
1. Effectively linking the
solutions to the buyers’
pains to make them see
the value of the offered
products
2. Creating a strong sales
culture with a focus on
customer’s needs and the
ability to offer strategic
solutions
3. Getting access to high-
level executives to have
meaningful business
conversations and form
strategic relationships
8
http://www.complexsale.com/uploads/CSO%20Insights%20Survey%20PR%202-4-08.pdf
What You Should Learn
Underperforming sales organizations are
more likely to have no enterprise-wide sales
process systems and methodologies. If your
salespeople are not following a defined sales
process or if they are selling products (by
emphasizing functions and features) rather
than solutions (which give emphasis to value
and return on investment) or if your sales
force is failing to leverage on productivity-
enhancing sales tools and processes, then
it’s time rethink your sales strategy. See the
sidebar for sales practices that are believed
to be most important by the top CEOs and
senior sales executives.8
Some sales forces follow informal processes
and some others may be having documented
processes but poor implementation. In all
probability, effectiveness of such
organizations is limited and their potential,
under-utilized.
Poor forecasts, missing targets, unclear
pipeline visibility, inconsistent sales
performance, longer sales cycles,
miscommunication between teams,
bottlenecks and missed opportunities are
some of the clearest indicators of poor sales
processes and systems in the organization.
You need to conduct a legacy research into
your company’s past sales performance to
see how the existing mechanism has failed
to capitalize on many opportunities and how
it is stifling the further growth. A
comparison with the competitors will put
things in perspective.
8
1. If there are no defined and documented sales processes then you need to
initiate one. For an effective sales process implementation, the organization
needs to identify its strategic objectives clearly and bring in the key
stakeholders to define the objectives of the sales processes.
2. Benchmark the existing sales processes to the best-in-industry or the world-
class sales organizations and identify the gaps in the performances. Allocate
the necessary resources and implement the best practices. Note that
changing the organizational culture takes time and effort. World-class sales
organizations are a result of continuous improvement, sustained effort and
incremental development.
3. Align your sales processes with the buying processes of your clients and
consumer behavioural patterns of the customers. Understand the issues
plaguing your customers and link your solutions to them. Identify the
influential stakeholders involved in the decision-making and target them.
When was the last time your salespeople talked to a senior level sales
executive of a big client organization? What process did you use then?
Have you been able to turn it into a strategic relationship?
4. Segment your customers and also your teams. There are many ways to
segment the market, such as revenue potential, buying patterns, needs, etc.,
and communicate with them in an effective manner. Using one standardized
sales approach to communicate with different customers – who possess
different needs and purchasing behaviour – is not the attribute of a high
performing sales force. Optimise your sales processes to target different
segments with focussed action. Calculate the lifetime values of the
customers and identify the golden ducks. Now, how well do you serve these
segments? How strong is your relationship with them? To make them your
strategic buyers, what changes would need to be brought in your sales
processes?
5. Standardize the sales processes across the organization and train your sales
force to work as one fluid system. From qualifying a lead to the measuring
the customer satisfaction levels, there ought to be a process that is
understood by everyone in the department without any ambiguity. Defining,
identifying and measuring key performance indicators such as conversion
rates, closing rates and resolution rates, you can ascertain how the sales
process implementation has been progressing and make the necessary
course corrections. How smooth do your sales processes run? How would
you rate the interactions between the cross-functional teams in your sales
force? How many sales tools and methodologies have you leveraged in the
last two years? How streamlined are the account management and sales
planning activities?

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 Key Performance Area 3 – Forming and Managing
Strategic Relationships

World-class sales organizations do not sell products to the customers. They

provide solutions and form relationships. Transformation of buyers into
partners and selling into customer relationship management is probably one of
the most significant changes witnessed by the businesses in the recent decades.
World-class organizations seem to understand that aspect exceedingly well.
Firms stuck in old-school mindset of ‘products and buyers and selling’ are the
ones that are badly hit by the fast-changing markets.

High performing sales organizations are outstanding in two areas in forming

and managing long-term relationships. The first thing is their sales processes
form one seamless flow of information, expertise and performance so as to
enable various cross-functional teams within the organization to work in
synchronicity to serve strategic business accounts of their clients in a well-
defined and productive manner.

Their internal collaboration (or management of in-house relationships) helps

them understand the needs of the clients in a better way and track the changes
that are most likely to affect their clients. While only 43 percent of the sales
organizations regularly collaborate across departments and cross-functional
teams to manage their strategic accounts such practice is prevalent in as many
as 92 percent of the world-class sales organizations.9

We regularly collaborate across

departments to manage strategic accounts.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
92% 43%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

9
2009 United States Sales Best Practices Survey – http://www.millerheiman.com/

10
 The second key performance area is their understanding, which clearly
manifests in their practice, that sales are no longer a business of salespeople
only but relationships that must be nurtured by all departments in the
organization. To put it another way, they have been able to design or adapt the
organizational roles, responsibilities, and processes with the customer
relationship management as the centre.

On the other hand, low performing sales forces still suffer from traditional
paradigm of rigid separation of roles and responsibilities between
manufacturing, marketing, sales, support, and back office staff.

Effective sales organizations also take a long-term view of their sales

operations and invest heavily in those areas, which they believe, will provide
strategic competitive advantage. More world-class sales organizations partner
with their customers to set joint long-term objectives to maintain the accounts
than the other sales forces.10

We joitly set long-term objectives with our

strategic accounts.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
89% 36%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

What You Should Learn

To quote Pareto’s Principle, 20 percent of your customers generate 80 percent

of your revenues. Such people are not customers; they are strategic assets that
must be nurtured with generous supply of value-added solutions. How does
your sales force treat such customers compared with other less-strategic
customers? Is there is a process in place to identify and qualify such strategic
10
2009 United States Sales Best Practices Survey – http://www.millerheiman.com/

11
opportunities? How do you rate the effectiveness of your sales and other cross-
functional teams in managing such strategic accounts? How can such in-house
collaborations be increased to create and manage strategic relationships?

1. Review and refine your opportunity identification strategy to make it more

sensitive to view things from the customer’s point-of-view. This needs a
careful analysis of the company’s strategic objectives, core competencies,
nature and of the solutions provided, etc.
2. Adopt a long-term view of your sales investment with an eye to capture
strategic accounts and improve the organizational efficiency in that
direction. Map your sales teams with an intention to acquire and manage
relationships with a two to three-year horizon. Avoid annual or quarterly
sales investments.
3. While it may sound repetitive and clichéd, get out of products-mindset and
take relationships-mindset. Identify critical sales skills required to manage
relationships in your domain and train the sales teams to excel in those
skills. Benchmark your sales force to the world-class sales organizations
with a metric-to-metric approach. Sales managers need to excel in their dual
roles as coach and manager.
4. Redefine selling into forming relationships. Redesign sales processes with
relationships in mind, rather than sales. Understand that the sustainable
competitive advantage is no longer in what you sell, but how you sell it.
5. Include a common element of customer focus in all operations of all teams
to create an alignment between departments. Test and fine-tune sales
processes, especially those that run between different teams and
departments. Make sure that teams such as after sales support and account
management consider themselves as a part of sales team.
6. Leverage sales tools and CRM software to share the best practices across
the organization. Tailor CRM needs to fit how customers buy. Benchmark
various sales management processes that deal with strategic account
management. They need to be standardized so as to ensure quality service
and also to make the service people-independent. That way, even if some
key employees leave the organization it will have minimal effect on the
strategic accounts.
7. Evaluate the customer lifetime values and optimize value addition to such
customers to foster long-term relationships. Develop segmented sales teams
to enhance their capability to better understand the needs of the customers
to serve them well and also to identify all factors that may affect customers.
Design strategic value propositions to woo them.
8. Understand customer’s needs to explore the opportunities to cross-sell new
products and services and up-sell existing line of offerings.

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 Key Performance Area 4 – Efficient Performance
Management Systems

Performance matter a lot in world-class sales organizations and their sales

processes and performance management systems fare better not just in hiring
the best talent and training it but also getting the most out of that talent when
compared to other sales organizations.

They are also better at understanding why their top performers are successful
and are adept at using their performance review processes to improve the
performance of other salespeople. 11

We understand why our top performers

succeed.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
94% 38%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

World-class sales organizations implement more rigorous hiring assessment

processes than other organizations to find the best talent. They also invest more
in the sales training programs. Extensive use of various key performance
indictors, metrics, benchmarks and performance evaluation tools let them
invest the financial resources in better sales training programs that produce
measurable improvement in the sales force effectiveness.12

They also leverage their top performer expertise much better than other sales
organizations. Further, the cross-organizational efforts to acquire, maintain and
nurture strategic relationships heavily boosts their overall performance. A
deeper analysis of some of these performance management systems offers
some interesting insights.
11
2009 United States Sales Best Practices Survey – http://www.millerheiman.com/
12
2006 Sales Performance Study – http://www.millerheiman.com/

13
 53%
Leveraging Top Performer Expertise
66%

47%
Hiring Assessment Processes
59%

39%
Sales Training Program Effectiveness
50%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

All Sales Organizations World-Class Sales Organizations

An efficient performance management system builds upon four important

components, namely superior hiring practices, effective sales training and
coaching programs, a customer-centric sales culture that values and nurtures
relationships and unbiased and objective incentives and recognition to motivate
the salespeople.

Sales
Superior
Training
Hiring
and
Practices
Coaching

Customer- Motivating
centric Incentives
Sales and
Culture Recognition

14
Hiring Practices

While many sales organizations have competency models that aid them in
finding the best talent, most of the times they are not completely utilized.
Instead, most of the sales managers depend on their hunches to select the
candidate from tens of others who seem to have an equal and matching set of
skills.

Organizations also have a tendency to pay top dollar for experienced

salespeople. Since sales is very much a talent-driven profession that shouldn’t
sound abnormal.

However, a research study by Gallup Management Journal covering more than

170 sales forces and 250,000 sales representatives tells a different thing. The
extensive data collected by the survey showed no correlation between
experience and sales performance beyond a short learning period.13

The study also reveals that sales training and coaching did not have any
measurable influence on the performance of bottom 50% of the salespeople in
many organizations.

What You Should Learn

Three important conclusions that can be drawn from the Gallup’s study are –

1. It is important to actively seek and attract new talent base with the required
skills that match the organizational requirements,
2. Increasing the talent base with fresh blood helps to increase the revenues,
and
3. Tightening the screening processes to minimize the ‘untrainable’ talent to
eliminate unnecessary sales expenditure.

With the old paradigms of selling a product making way to customer-centric

sales models, using the traditional static competency model to screen the talent
will not be so effective. Infusing a customer-centric perspective can prove to be
more helpful in identifying potential candidates.

In addition, many organizations stop assessing a potential sales person soon

after he or she is hired. However, maintaining a documented profiling of the
person’s skills and activities will help the management to have a better
understanding of the person’s capability to learn, integrate and grow with the
organization.

13
http://gmj.gallup.com/content/331/building-worldclass-sales-force.aspx

15
Sales Training and Coaching

World-class organizations have robust sales training and coaching processes

that lend them an advantage when compared to other organizations in
sustaining the competitive advantage of their sales model. With the shorter
product lifecycles, increased sales cycles, adoption of new technologies,
increased product and service integration and stiff competition to attract the
attention of customers, sales has never been so challenging. Studies show that
only 60 percent of sales people meet their targets and the overall sales
productivity per person has been diminishing year after year.14

The traditional sales management practices portray sales forces into new hires
or low performers, the core group that posts moderate performance but has the
potential to grow and high performers in a bell-shaped curve. The core group is
the most prominent one with both low and high performers forming fringe
groups.

The primary challenge before a sales manager and any sales training program is
to shift the curve eastward to make it prominent in high performance area and
achieve high returns on sales investment.

While 80/20 rule holds true in the case of sales people, that is 20 percent of
sales people generate 80 percent of business, concentrating solely on high
performing talent is not recommended. By strengthening sales processes and
implementing effective sales training programs to train the fresh talent will
help organization cushion the impact of sudden talent loss.

A study indicates that a 5% increase in the performance of core group produces

70 percent more revenue than a similar increase in the performance of high
performer group.15

14
Sales Benchmark Index – Sales and Marketing Management 2007
15
http://www.maritz.com/~/media/Files/MaritzDotCom/White%20Papers/Driving-Sales-Force-
Effectiveness.ashx

16
 According to a study of 540 companies by FG
American Society for Training and
16
Development , high performance companies A world-wide study of
invest nearly 6 percent of their payroll budget on high performance sales
workplace training and they train nearly 86% of organizations by HR
the workforce. The outcome is 57% higher net Chally Group identified
sales per employee, 37% higher gross profits per the following seven
employee, and a 20% higher ratio in market-to- skills as most critical
book value. for many businesses –
What You Should Learn

1. The sales training programs and processes Ability to understand the

should train nearly all sales staff on a regular customer’s needs deeply
basis to reinforce the standardized sales Managing the customer’s
processes, increase cross-organizational satisfaction levels in
collaboration, keep up with the changes in the person
markets, and understand the products and
services more deeply. Recommending products,
2. Identify the critical sales skills17 that are services and applications
crucial for the markets you operate in and that best fit the
concentrate on developing such skills in the customer’s needs
entire spectrum of sales force. Also invest
Providing the necessary
heavily in adapting enterprise-wide Customer
technical and after-sales
Relationship Management (CRM) tools and
support
technologies to enhance the relationship
management capability of the sales force. Providing best possible
3. Sales training programs should deliver advise to the customers
measurable improvement in sales
performance rather than teaching the newest Solving logistical
sales development program. At the end of the problems and delivering
day, it should be able to enhance the the products or services
effectiveness of your sales force in managing on time
customer relations in much better way. Delivering innovative
4. Develop a sustainable sales effectiveness solutions to fill the needs
improvement-training program that is of the customers
business-focussed. Use benchmarking tools
ED
16
Page 59, Branded Customer Service – The New Competitive Edge by Janelle Barlow, Paul Stewart - 2004 -
Business & Economics
17
http://www.chally.com/wcs/sales-growth/sales-force-gap.html

17
 with clearly defined metrics and performance indicators extensively to
adapt the best sales practices in the organization.
5. Coaching processes and certifications should be linked with the employee’s
performance on the job. Precise measurement tools from various industry
best practices need to be adapted to link customer satisfaction and the sales
performance of a person. The same data can be an important element in
determining incentives and rewards.

Customer-Centric Organizational Sales Culture

As discussed before the sales processes of the successful organizations are built
around customer or at least they seem to work with the customer as their focus.
Such systems provide incentive on focusing on the needs of the customers,
providing them with value-added services and nurture long-term relationships.

At the same these sales culture also show remarkable flexibility to keep with
the changing market conditions and needs of the customers. The organizational
structures of the world-class sales organizations are nearly three times more
adaptive to the dynamic needs and concerns of the customers than other
organizations.18

Flexibility of the Organizational Structures

to Adapt to Customers' Changing Needs
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
91% 36%
0%
World-Class Sales Organizations All Sales Organizations

The customer-centric sales processes make heavy use of CRM tools and
technologies to devise value-added services with real-time and historical
analytical capabilities that provide insights into the needs of the customers.
Such a system allows the sales force to concentrate on the right kind of

18
2009 United States Sales Best Practices Survey – http://www.millerheiman.com/

18
 accounts and make the most of high impact opportunities. All sales operations
and support systems are aligned with the behavioural patterns of the consumers
and buying nature of the clients. They are also optimized to deliver and ensure
high customer satisfaction levels.

Strategic market segmentation allows them to understand the needs of the

consumers at a much deeper way. There exist proper channels to collect,
analyse and act upon customer feedback. The sales processes and the strategic
sales investments provide them ample opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell
many other products and services to the existing customers, thus increasing the
bottom line.

All these efforts gradually transform the organization from a product-driven or

market-driven sales force into a customer-driven sales organization.19

Stock Product Technology Market Selling Customer

driven sales driven sales driven sales driven sales driven sales driven sales
processes processes processes processes processes processes

40-70% 50-80% 50-80% 75-90% 88-95% 91+%

customer customer customer customer customer customer
evaluation evaluation evaluation evaluation evaluation evaluation
Very low Very low Low Moderate High High
probability probability probability probability probability probability
of of of of of of
becoming a becoming a becoming a becoming a becoming a becoming a
world-class world-class world-class world-class world-class world-class
sales force sales force sales force sales force sales force sales force

What You Should Learn

1. Redefine your strategic objectives with customer as the focus and see how
that changes your perspective.
2. Finetune all sales processes with the purpose of generating high customer
satisfaction levels.
3. Adopt CRM tools and technologies to better manage customer accounts and
add value to the customer service.
4. Segment your market by potential and actively develop the expertise of
your sales teams in understanding, identifying and solving various issues in
the customer’s domain.

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Adopted from The Chally World Class Sales Excellence Research Report 2007 – http://www.chally.com/

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 Maarket
Segmeentation

CRM
Custoomers Sales
Processes

Value Added
Soluutions

5. Benchmaark all sales processes to the best practices and initiate i salees
training programs withw the inntention of increasing customer sensitivenes
s ss
and custoomer satisfaaction levells. Use cleaarly definedd metrics to measure thhe
effectiveness of bothh the traininng program ms and the saales force.
6. Identify critical salees skills andd relationshhip developpment skillss in the salees
force andd impart suuch skills tthrough botth formal and a inform mal coachingg.
Change their
t mindsset from beeing a selleer to custom mer adviserr. Link theeir
incentivees and rewaards to the ccustomer sattisfaction leevels.

Motivatting Incenttives and Rewards

R

To keep thee sales forcce enthusiaastic and motivated,

T m tthe best inccentives annd
reecognition practices must be integrated into perfformance managemenm nt
processes. The
T organizaation shoulld concentraate on bothh top performmers as weell
as core group and motivvate them for acceleratted growth..

What You Shouuld Learn

1. Most hig gh perform ming sales oorganization ns employ self-fundinng, non-cassh

incentivee programs to motivatee sales peop ple and suchh measures are believeed
to be efffective. Hoowever, thee organizatiional culturre is also an a importannt
factor thaat affects thhe motivatioon levels.
2. It is not necessary
n thhat both topp performers and coree group be motivated
m b
by
same facctors. It wo ould be helpful to em mploy emplloyee reseaarch and thhe
 profiles of each performer before
designing appropriate recognition and
incentive programs.
3. Since a large part of a sales force does
not belong to the high performance
group, incentives designed for top
performers may fail to motivate them. So
the sales organization should have a
separate incentive program in place that
offers meaningful rewards
demonstrated improvement for core
group performers and new-hires.
Summary
World-class sales
organizations are outstanding
due to their excellence in four
for
key performance areas –
1. Creating and
Prioritizing Sales
Opportunities
2. Managing
Opportunities with
Effective Sales
Processes
3. Forming and Managing
Strategic Relationships
4. Efficient Performance
Management Systems
that employ superior
hiring practices, sales
training & coaching
programs, motivating
incentives & rewards to
create customer-centric
organizational sales
culture
By benchmarking your sales
organization to the best
practices of such
organizations, the
effectiveness of your sales
force can be greatly
enhanced.
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Further Reading

1. http://www.isixsigma.com/bp/sales/
2. http://www.maritz.com/White-Papers/Driving-Sales-Force-
Effectiveness.aspx
3. http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_cookies.htm
4. http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c040906a.asp
5. http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/sales/e3if3e6682542f
98d1c9973ef5ae56eddb7
6. http://www.actionselling.com/best-sales-practices.asp
7. http://resources.bnet.com/topic/best+practices.html
8. Art Wilson, (2005), Building a Successful Selling Organization: The
Critical Path to Extraordinary Results, iUniverse Inc.
9. Chet Holmes, (2008), The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your
Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies, Portfolio Books
10. Nigel F Piercy & Nikala Lane, (2009), Strategic Customer Management:
Strategizing the Sales Organization, Oxford University Press

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