Front-line sales management can be one of the toughest jobs. In many ways, you’ve a lot of responsibility – but you’re dependent on your team to deliver. At times you need to be a blend of manager, business analyst, coach, therapist, counsellor, and the list goes on. Whatever the mix is, there are always highs and lows, times when you are excited and grateful for things that go well, and then there is the rest of the time – well when you can be infuriated, dispirited, discouraged, dissatisfied, enraged, discontent, vexed … ok you get the message. But what bothers you the most? And, most importantly, what can you do about it?
A recent survey on LinkedIn tries to answer the first question – and the results are in. Reps not following the sales process is the biggest frustration among the respondents to the survey. I’m not surprised with that answer. But looking at the other ‘frustrations’ listed (Sales forecast accuracy, Deadwood in the pipeline, Stop/start activity, and Deals getting stuck), I can’t help but wonder if they too might be resolved if the sales process issue was fixed.
Now, there are only two reasons for non-compliance with any directive. The first is lack of knowledge or ability, and the second in lack of desire. In others words, either they can’t do the task, or they don’t want to do the task. The first – once uncovered – can be fixed with training. The second – unwillingness, or lack of desire – is harder to address.
Here’s the thing. Most sales professionals understand that following a well designed sales process, that is easy to use, fits their business, and solves for the effort/reward equation, is a no-brainer. Use the process and you sell more – period.
If you’re the sales manager, and you’re directing your team to use a sales process, the 10 questions you need to ask yourself are:
- Does it match how our typical customers want to buy?
- Does it fit our industry, product or service?
- Do all the supporting departments in the company understand the sales process, so that they can have a productive conversation with the sales person?
- Is it easy to use and integrated with your CRM?
- Does compliance with the sales process make sales forecasts more accurate – or does the sales person need to waste time on that as well?
- Does the sales process have built-in steps to remove deadwood from the pipeline?
- Does it guide the sales person to win the deal, and not just force him (her) through internally focused steps?
- Do you manage deals, using the sales process as your compass?
- Have you integrated the necessary marketing support / tools / collateral all through the sales process, mapped to the buying process?
- Have you integrated skill/methodology/best practice learning at each step – that can be called on as needed?
If you can answer yes to more that 7 of these questions – then you’re probably not that frustrated, and your sales team is probably performing pretty well. If you can’t, then don’t blame the team for not following the process. Fix the deficiencies first.
February 28th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by sales20network: New blog post: What’s the biggest frustration for sales managers? http://sales20network.com/blog/?p=404...
March 1st, 2010 at 5:19 am
Great post Donal. The front line sales manager has to be THE crucial function for a selling company to sell well. If they don’t work well, you’ve got problems, since they’re key to getting the guys right.
March 1st, 2010 at 8:53 am
A defineable sales process is pretty important for scale and efficiency. The biggest frustration that I have seen is communication and repeatedly making the same mistakes. It is ok to fall into a pothole once (maybe twice) but continually repeating the same mistake can cause additional frustration.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:02 am
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the comment.
I think it is about making sure the process reflects not just how the customer buys (that’s essential) but also is aligned with how your organization works. That’s what encourages sales person adoption of the process and reduce the occurrence of making the same mistakes repeatedly. Also, (and I’m this is clearly biased by what we do with Dealmaker) it’s important to have a technology supported sales process – so that communication is up-tyo-date in real-time between sales person and sales manager.
Stay tuned here this week to see an exciting announcement about sales process creation.
Thanks
Donal
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:49 am
Hello Donal.
One of the challenges that I see is that organizations are taking exisiting sales process and then implementing a CRM tool around that process. The problem with that is the assumption of the senior management that they can implement the CRM tool without redefining/re architecting their sales process. We are seeing a big surge in the marketplace for implementation of CRM solution however that is not always accompanied by a realignment of their sales processes. Additionally, while leading CRM application vendors have started the process, not many Social media applications are yet tightly integrated with these CRM applications to support a Sales 2.0 process. I think over the next 12 – 18 months we will see a major shift as CRM applications, fully integrated with Social Media including Social Networking, becomes a norm and sales organization will find it easy to adopt and implement.
Thanks
Sandeep
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Sandeep, thanks for the comment.
The core issue, of not realigning sales processes, in tandem with (or before) CRM implementation is a really important one. One of the challenges might be the expense and time involved. Look back here next Monday to see an exciting announcement about that.
Thanks for your contribution.
Donal
March 6th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Not following sales process. As mentioned above, are these processes reflecting and enhancing the buyers process (ie Buyer2.0 world)?
ie. spending hours filling in dozens of CRM fields, etc. or dealing with poor, sloppy prospect data etc.
Well as CSO study shows, 50% reps not making quota. So about 25-40% of Sales managers not meeting Team KPI’s. In the hockey world, coaches like that gotta find another rink after 2 yrs.
(or change the way they play)
regards,
Stuart
March 7th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Stuart
Thanks for the comment.
Yep. sales process is really critical.
You might have seen we launched Dealmaker Genius to help sales leaders create a sales process automatically.
If you’ve not seen it – it’s here http://bit.ly/9IDi2Y
Enjoy!
March 9th, 2010 at 12:39 am
Hi Donal
Great post, and interesting to get an insight into the kind of things that frustrate managers.
There is no doubt that there has been a fundamental shift in the way selling and buying is done, and in my industry (media), it has certainly been a case of some of the old guard not asking themselves at least the first 2 of your questions.
I think a sales process is something that should be reviewed on a bi-annual basis. Not to say it needs to change that often, but commerce is moving at such a rapid pace now that in reviewing it less often than this, your sales organisation may fnd itself too far behind to keep up, or affect change in such a fashion that it doesn’t render skill sets redundant and have a process that is too hard for people to get their head around.
cheers
Ben