In this series of articles, we are introducing the research findings from the best-selling book Cracking the Sales Management Code, by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana. In our first article <insert link>, we revealed that there are three levels of sales force metrics, as judged by their ‘manageability’:
- Business Results like Percent Revenue Growth, which are completely unmanageable
- Sales Objectives like Number of New Customers Acquired, which can be influence but not directly managed
- Sales Activities like Percent of Account Plans Completed, which are directly manageable
We now explore Sales Activities in more depth.
A Sales Process, You Say?
Recall that Sales Activities are the most tactical and manageable things in a sales force. Literally, they are the things that salespeople and their managers do between Monday morning and Friday afternoon – things like making sales calls, using CRM, and coaching salespeople. As we stared at these activities (for a very long time), we noticed that they began to cluster into logical groupings that could be used to accomplish similar outcomes. We called these groupings sales processes.
Of course, the term ‘sales process’ is not new, and it means different things to different people. We believe the lack of clear definition hinders effective selling and management. While most companies would say that they have some form of sales process in place, the nature of that process might range from planning sales calls, to managing a sales cycle, to completing major account plans. The term sales process is so overused, it has remarkably come to mean everything and nothing simultaneously.
Our research suggested that the sales function is, in fact, a collection of distinct selling processes that work to accomplish unique objectives. Understanding the differences between the processes is absolutely critical, because it allows for better management and enablement of each, which in turn leads to superior sales performance. That left us with two very important questions that had to be answered:
- What are the distinct sales processes?
- How do you know which processes you need in your sales force?
What Are the Sales Processes?
After examining and categorizing all of the metrics we had labeled as Sales Activities, we were able to identify five sales processes that encompassed all of the Sales Activities in our study.
First, we found a Call Management process. This process is intended to help salespeople improve the quality of a single customer interaction – whether face-to-face or by phone. Sellers will typically plan ahead things such as their desired call outcomes, questions they might ask, or objections they might expect. Salespeople will then execute and document the customer interaction and its outcomes.
Sample Call Management metrics:
- Number of Call Plans Completed
- Percentage of Reps Following Process
- Number Minutes Talk Time
If you string together a series of sales calls in pursuit of a single sale, then you have what we commonly refer to as an ‘opportunity.’ An Opportunity Management process helps salespeople plan and execute a thoughtful approach to long, complex sale cycles. Often confused with ‘pipeline management,’ this process is not an analytic exercise to pinpoint failures in a collection of ongoing opportunities – this is an assessment and planning effort to deliberately win an individual sales pursuit.
Sample Opportunity Management metrics:
- Number of Opportunity Plans Completed
- Adherence to Opportunity Planning Process
- Percentage of Qualified Opportunities
If you pursue multiple opportunities over time with a single customer, then you are probably managing that ongoing business relationship. An Account Management process will help you assess your company’s position within that key customer and coordinate internal and external resources to grow the long-term value of the account. These activities can also be labelled as account planning.
Sample Account Management metrics:
- Percent Account Plans Complete
- Number of Interactions per Account
- Number of Joint Meetings with Accounts
If a salesperson is assigned a group of accounts or prospects, then they have a ‘territory.’ Note that a territory does not necessarily need to be geographically defined – a salesperson could be assigned accounts that are chosen in many ways (industry, customer segment, etc.). Regardless, a Territory Management process helps salespeople and their managers decide how to allocate their time across a large group of customers.
Sample Territory Management metrics:
- Number of Accounts per Rep
- Number of Sales Calls Made
- Percent Prospects vs. Active Customers
Finally, there is what we called a Sales Force Enablement process. This process has the largest scope of them all and is very diverse in nature. Sales Enablement activities include recruiting, selecting, training, motivating, coaching, rewarding, and providing tools that enable the sales force’s performance. This process is typically shared across several roles and departments, including sales, HR, and finance.
Sample Sales Force Enablement metrics:
- Percentage of Time Spent Coaching
- Number of Hours Training per FTE
- Technology Spend per FTE
Which Sales Processes Do You Need?
Now that we have five clearly defined sales processes and their associated metrics, how do you know which processes you should implement in your sales force? We first suspected that company demographics should inform which processes are important for a particular sales force. For instance, if a company’s profits are highly concentrated in a handful of accounts, then that company surely must need Account Management processes.
However, we soon concluded that sales processes should never be selected at a company-wide level. The need for a specific sales process is determined by the nature of each distinctive selling role. That is, companies don’t need Account Management processes – only those salespeople who manage accounts need them.
Sales process selection is therefore not a decision to be made by examining the enterprise – it is a decision best made by examining the role. Below we provide rule-of-thumb guidelines for when a particular process is appropriate for a particular selling role.
Call Management process when:
- The salesperson has a low to moderate volume of highly varied and high-risk customer interactions
Opportunity Management process when:
- The salesperson is targeting customers with complex buying processes (numerous buying stages and/or multiple buyers with different buying needs)
Account Management process when:
- The salesperson is pursuing multiple opportunities over time with the same customer
- There is an economic justification for the added layer of effort
Territory Management process when:
- The salesperson makes proactive customer contact and cannot service all potential customers fully
- The salesperson needs to prioritize the selling effort and allocate it across different types of customers and prospects
Sales Force Enablement process when:
- The company wants and has the authority to affect decisions in the hiring, training, measuring, coaching, motivating, rewarding, and enabling of the sales force
Note that it is not the title of the role that indicates which processes are important. For example, just because a salesperson has the title ‘Territory Rep’ does not mean that they require a Territory Management process. Nor does a salesperson whose business card reads ‘Account Executive’ necessarily require an Account Management process. You must examine the nature of their selling activities to determine which processes are applicable to the execution, measurement, and management of that selling role.
Implications for Sales Leaders
It is absolutely vital that sales leadership understands the five flavors of sales processes and their unique applications to distinct selling roles. We have often seen sales processes implemented for the wrong (or unknown) reasons with very predictable outcomes.
First, the processes are ignored by the sales force. This can result from processes that are over-engineered or badly designed, but it is just as often because the processes being implemented are not relevant for the selling roles upon which they are being inflicted. Process abandonment and management frustration follow predictably thereafter.
Second, sales management can spend an insane amount of time trying to both enforce the processes and explain to senior leadership why the promised Return on Investment has not materialized. The investment required to design and deploy a sales process is not trivial, and deploying the wrong one only compounds the costs. (In fact, we could argue that it is better to have no formal process than to implement the wrong sales process.)
In the end, our research revealed two key insights on sales processes:
- There are several discrete sales processes with different uses and metrics
- Sales leaders must be very deliberate about the processes they choose to deploy
If you ignore these two insights, you will not only confuse and frustrate your sellers, you will confuse and frustrate yourself. But more devastatingly, your sales force will underperform its potential.
In the next installment of this series, we reveal the four Sales Objectives we found in our research and how the objectives can be achieved through the deliberate management of Sales Activities.