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Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can
“Fix” Sales and Marketing
A Guide for Chief Executives and Business Unit Leaders
by Michael J. Webb, President
Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.
Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. Roswell, GA 30076
(877) 784-6507 www.salesperformance.com
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 2
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can
“Fix” Sales and Marketing
Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3
What is the Sales Process? .............................................................................................................. 4
Major Steps in the Sales Process ................................................................................................. 5
Why The Usual Fixes for Sales Problems Fail ........................................................................... 7
Applying Process Thinking to Marketing and Sales ..................................................................... 10
Next Steps to Consider .................................................................................................................. 13
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 3
Introduction
This whitepaper is the second in a series written for Chief Executives and Business Unit Leaders.
In these whitepapers, we illustrate why applying Lean process excellence in marketing and sales
is one of the most strategically powerful things a leader can do for an organization.
However, those methods must be adapted to the unique requirements of sales, which is
something most otherwise savvy executives and process improvement experts are not yet
familiar with.
The purpose of this whitepaper, the second in our series, is to illustrate exactly how the
techniques of Lean process excellence apply to sales and marketing. We begin with a definition
of the sales process.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 4
What is the Sales Process?
The word ‘process’ can mean different things to different people. To most sales people and
managers, the sales process comprises the things salespeople do to move customers through the
“sales funnel”—the stages customers go through, from being prospects to leads to customers.
Many sales managers think of the sales process as the sale itself: “Where is Acme Company in
the sales process, and when are they going to buy?”
Most general managers also think of the sales process as the sales pipeline, prompting them to
request reports on the number of prospects, sales calls (or deals in progress), deals expected to
close, and deals closed within a specified period. However, what if you thought about it in the
same way you think about your manufacturing operations; what if you thought about sales as a
process for producing desirable customers.
What does this mean? By looking at the sales process as a set of linked and measurable activities
that you use to find, win and keep customers, we can:
• Define sales as a business process and consider the rationale for each activity and the
linkages among them
• Consider the role of each activity in finding, winning and keeping customers as well as
the inputs and outputs related to each activity
• Develop ways to measure each activity and its costs and results, so they can be improved
Like any production process, sales takes inputs (people who may need your product or service)
and, by adding value to them, transforms them into outputs (customers). In adding value to these
people, the sales process converts leads into prospects, prospects into deals, and, ultimately,
customers.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 5
Major Steps in the Sales Process
Like any production process, the sales process has distinct steps. The major steps in the sales
process are finding, winning and keeping customers (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Sales is a Process for Producing Customers
In general, the broadly defined activities of finding, winning and keeping customers are the
responsibilities of the marketing, sales and service functions, respectively. There is significant
overlap among these activities in various industries, but in general marketing finds, sales wins,
and service keeps customers. Managing these as an integrated system rather than as independent
functions reduces waste and makes selling easier for your company and for your customers. It
also enables you to identify cases of suboptimization, such as when the marketing department
proudly hands over boxes of “leads” from a trade show. (This paper focuses primarily on sales
and marketing rather than services.)
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 6
Accepting (even provisionally) the idea that sales is a process is the first step in applying process
thinking to sales. With that step completed, let’s focus on customers and how a sales process
creates value for them.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 7
Why The Usual Fixes for Sales Problems Fail
If sales are not managed as a process, the process cannot be changed to rapidly address the true
needs of the customer. Your organization will resist change unless it can learn from the customer
by understanding cause and effect within the sales process and then changing the sales process
accordingly.
The usual fixes for sales problems usually fail because the actual problem—and its cause—is rarely understood, or even identified.
Without understanding the chain of cause and effect between your sales activities and customers’
actions, you have a limited inventory of solutions to business challenges. I call these “the usual
fixes” because they are so prevalent and because they usually fail to generate lasting
improvement.
The usual fixes include:
• Replacing the sales manager or salespeople
• Trying a new type of sales training
• Launching a new lead-generation program in marketing
• Installing or upgrading customer relationship management (CRM) or sales force
automation (SFA) software
• Changing the incentive plan or holding a sales contest
• Reassigning accounts or redrawing sales territories
• Hiring a new ad agency to tweak the brand image
Because the root causes of sales problems have not been identified, these fixes are usually
implemented based on assumptions rather than facts. (In fact, many CRM systems actually mask
data-driven feedback on conversion data in favor of someone’s arbitrary idea of “percent chance
of closing.” That is simply ridiculous.)
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 8
Another view of the failure modes of common fixes is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3:
Another View of Failure Modes of Common Fixes
I’m not saying the usual fixes are always wrong. I’m saying they can’t represent genuine
solutions unless three things are true:
1. The sales organization has agreed on operating definitions around its primary terms of
production, such as leads, qualified opportunities, customers, etc. (meaning they can be
traced to observable characteristics).
2. The data gathered from sales operations demonstrates numerically the likely bottlenecks
and causes of problems.
3. The fix directly addresses causes.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
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This is rarely the case because sales is rarely managed as a process, which would deliver data
usable in cause-and-effect analysis.
In addition, the usual fixes do little to address the most common barriers to higher sales
performance. These barriers include poorly conceived value propositions, lack of operating
definitions for key variables (such as “lead,” “qualified prospect” and “customer”),
administrative tasks assigned to salespeople, problems in customer training or service, marketing
initiatives unconnected to sales efforts, and misaligned incentive programs. These problems can
be identified, analyzed and addressed when management approaches marketing, sales, and
service as a process—and sets the usual fixes aside.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 10
Applying Process Thinking to Marketing and Sales
From senior management’s perspective, a major benefit of managing sales as a process is far
greater visibility into sales and greatly improved ability to manage it. Even in well-managed
companies, sales is usually viewed as a black box and rarely managed with the same rigor as
production, distribution or finance. The rationale is that sales is different because it consists of
communications, relationship building and other activities aimed at influencing behavior.
But once you view sales as a process, that reasoning recedes. Sales is different, but it can and
should be managed as a process, if only to maximize the value that sales delivers to the
customer. Lean thinking dictates that each activity in the sales process should create value for the
customer.
Increase the chances for value creation by comparing your sales process to the Customer’s
Journey. The Customer’s Journey is the predictable path—or stages—that your customers travel
from being prospects who need your product or service to becoming customers (it also covers the
transition from buying only small amounts of your product or service to much larger amounts).
Figure 2 shows how buyers’ and sellers’ motives can actually work at cross-purposes.
Customers may not realize they have a problem, and may not believe that solving it is a priority
for their organization. Or they may understand the problem but not know how to consider
potential solutions. They may even be considering solutions and not realize that your product or
service is among them. In other words, customers may be at any stage of their transformation.
Regardless of the stage, your sales process should help them move toward the next one.
In many organizations—despite the best intentions—salespeople are basically sent out to push
product and bring back the money. As a brief test, ask yourself this question: Do I express as
much interest in how sales achieves its goals as I do in whether sales achieves its goals?—and
answer it honestly.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 11
Figure 2:
The Customer’s Journey vs. the Sales Process
If you answered “No,” you are not managing sales as a process. Further, if you and your sales
teams have not at least investigated and defined your Customer’s Journey, you might be in for
some surprises.
As a senior executive, ask yourself, “Do I express as much interest
in how sales achieves its goals as I do in whether sales achieves its goals?
Move toward managing sales as a process by considering the following questions.
• What makes your customers realize they have the kind of problem your products and
services solve?
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 12
• What causes them to make it a strategic objective?
• Who else in their company needs to be involved? What must happen before they can
take steps to solve it?
• What factors and alternatives should they consider before making a decision?
• How do they now make the purchase decision?
These questions help you understand the Customer’s Journey and help you identify marketing
and sales activities that would assist your customers on their journey. Those are the marketing
and sales activities that add value. Other activities may be generating waste.
Lean thinking holds that value in a product is what customers will pay for. In sales, value is what
customers pay for with their attention, time, cooperation and commitment. If you are not getting
enough of these from your prospects, improve your sales process by giving customers what they
want and need on their journey.
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 13
Next Steps to Consider
• If you have not already read our first executive series white paper, “How to Grow Your
Business Through Lean Process Excellence in Sales and Marketing,” it will help put the
concept of lean process improvement applied to sales into context.
• A key element in any lean process is gathering, and using, customer information. What
do your customers truly value? Would customers be interested in talking with your sales
people if they had to pay for that service? We take up this provocative idea in in our
third Executive White Paper: How to Really Hear the Voice of the Customer
• With these elements in place, you are now ready to start the lean journey in sales. We
provide you with an outline of how to process in our fourth Executive White Paper: How
Sales Process Improvement Works
• If you are convinced that applying lean to sales and marketing makes sense, then you
may want to suggest that your sales executives read our white paper series specifically
written for them: Find, Win, and Keep More of The Right Customers While Making Sales
Easier.
• Likewise, you can suggest that your head of quality improvement or process excellence
looking at our white paper series How to Bring the Power of Lean Process Excellence to
Sales and Marketing, written specifically for them.
• For case studies of companies that have successfully implemented lean processes to sales
and impacted their topline revenues, visit www.salesperformance.com/testimonials.
• Contact SPC to see how we can help your team with this important objective. Please
include:
- Your sales organization’s size, market geography and industry
- Specific UDRs and challenges you are facing
- What attempts you have made to overcome those challenges
- What you would like SPC to do for you
Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. • 877-784-6507 • [email protected]
345 Banyon Brook Pt, Roswell GA, 30076 • www.salesperformance.com
Defining the Sales Process How Lean Process Excellence Can “Fix” Sales and Marketing
Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. 14
About Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.
Founded in 2002, Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. helps the sales organizations of B2B
companies improve their processes for finding, winning and keeping customers. SPC’s
proprietary methods address the challenges of selling in global markets, managing dispersed
sales teams and working effectively with channel partners and in complex distribution systems.
SPC has helped divisions of Pentair, Tyco, DuPont, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and dozens of
other companies make their sales funnel flow faster by enabling them to identify and deliver
more customer value, while reducing bottlenecks, waste, cost of sales, and time to market.
About Michael J. Webb
In 2002, after a lengthy career in field sales, sales management and sales training, Michael Webb
founded Sales Performance Consultants to create a data-driven alternative to the slogans and
shallow impact offered by typical sales training, sales consulting and CRM companies. Michael
helped organize the first conferences on applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales, and is the
author of “Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way” (Kaplan, 2006, 4.5 stars on Amazon) and
numerous articles on how B2B sales organizations can benefit from Lean and process
improvement techniques.
He holds professional certifications in production and inventory management, quality
management, and has a BS in Mathematics from Southeast Missouri State University.