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Copyright © 2012 Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

Find, Win, and Keep More Customers

Using Sales Process Improvement A Guide for Sales and Marketing Managers

by

Michael J. Webb, President Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.

Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.

Roswell, GA 30076

(877) 784-6507

www.salesperformance.com


Table of Contents

Introduction: Using Sales to Create Value for Customers

Chapter 1. Beyond the Numbers Game

Chapter 2. Viewing Sales as a Process

Chapter 3. Measuring the Value Created by Your Sales Process

Chapter 4. The Role of Marketing in the Sales Process

Chapter 5. Three Root Causes of Sales Problems

Chapter 6. Case Example: Business to Business Software Company

Chapter 7. Sales Process Improvement Engages Other Functions

Chapter 8. Leading Salespeople to Process Approaches

Chapter 9. Maximizing the Likelihood of Success

About Michael J. Webb

About Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.


Introduction:

Using Sales to Create

Value for Customers

If you are a sales or marketing manager, you may be skeptical about applying quality and

process improvement to your area. That is understandable. The approach differs sharply

from what I call the usual fixes for sales problems, such as sales training, software

programs, incentive schemes, lead generation and promotional campaigns, and so on.

As a former sales manager and sales trainer, I understand sales, customer buying

processes, and organizational impediments to increased sales performance. I know that

marketing campaigns lack coordination, lead generation often fails, administrative tasks

waste time, bottlenecks frustrate salespeople, and monthly revenue demands keep sales

managers and salespeople under constant stress. I also understand how process

improvement can position you to solve most of the problems you face.

In this document, I won’t go into the history or achievements of quality improvement in

manufacturing. Nor will I drill you on the technical aspects of those methods (which I

covered in some depth in my book Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way). Instead, in

this guide I will:

Explain how current sales management methods create problems in sales, and

why current problem-solving methods don’t work

Describe how process excellence applies in sales and marketing and why it is

worth applying

Show how you can begin to work within your organization to start applying

process excellence to your sales and marketing functions, particularly if your

company has in-house process improvement expertise and experience

The alternative is to continue to manage sales and marketing as they are currently

managed in most business-to-business (B2B) sales environments, even in many otherwise

sophisticated, customer-focused organizations. As a sales or marketing manager, you owe

it to yourself, to your salespeople, to your organization, and to your customers to

seriously consider this approach to managing sales and marketing.


Chapter 1

Beyond the Numbers Game

Despite developments such as “consultative selling” and “partnering with customers,”

salespeople in B2B environments still mainly work to set up sales calls, present products,

and move each potential deal from lead to prospect to customer. They build

relationships, cultivate internal champions, negotiate prices, and create a sense of

urgency, while management monitors the numbers of leads, prospects, and customers

these activities produce. As a result, salespeople and sales managers alike view sales as a

numbers game.

In this game, sales managers push their salespeople to find more leads, convert more

leads into prospects, and persuade more prospects to become customers, and salespeople

work to meet these expectations. The primary goals are to hit your targets, achieve your

quotas, make your numbers.

Sales is about numbers, but sales should not be managed as a numbers game.

Leads, prospects, calls, and customers

Forecasts, quotas, budgets, and variances

Market share and penetration are important

You cannot manage sales as a numbers game focused solely on the questions:

How many leads do we have?

How many prospects?

Where are they in the pipeline?

How many calls did we make?

How many deals will close in this period?

Call Out

Do you manage sales as a numbers game? How is this working for you?


While these questions have their place, they have crowded out more useful questions

such as:

What value are customers now seeking from our products?

What do prospects want and need when making a purchase decision?

Which sales and marketing activities are working? Which ones aren’t?

What are the main organizational impediments to sales?

How can we make selling easier for salespeople?

Here are five reasons to stop managing sales solely as a numbers game:

1. You’re measuring only results: Measuring the number of leads, prospects,

calls, and closed deals is fine, but they are gross measures. The numbers game

prompts the questions How-many? and Did-you-close? which tends to drive

increased activity with little thought to the value created by the activity.

2. You’re not measuring quality: The numbers game ignores the quality of leads,

prospects, and customers. (If you’re a sales manager you have at some time

surely received a huge folder of useless leads from a marketing campaign.) Not

even all customers are created equal. Don’t you want the best leads, prospects,

and customers?

3. You’re not measuring value: Your sales process can and should create value for

your prospects and customers, as well as for your company. It should do so at

every stage of the Customer’s Journey, and this value should be measured. If all

you measure is sales results, that isn’t happening.

4. You can’t tell what is working and what isn’t: This is the biggest problem with

the numbers game. Until you realize a needed to systematically analyze what was

working and not working in the field, you can’t develop the methods for doing it.

As a result, you cannot improve the value your sales process creates because

you’re not detecting or measuring that value.

5. You can’t solve sales problems: Without data on what’s working and what isn’t,

you cannot discover the cause of sales problems or improve productivity. You


cannot even define sales problems accurately. This leaves you with only

experience and intuition—and the usual fixes—rather than data and problem-

solving tools.

If you manage sales as a numbers game as described here, you are doing what most

companies do. We all know this. We’ve all seen numbers-driven sales managers who

book revenue into the period that makes sales look best. We’ve all seen managers

discourage “stories” from salespeople trying to explain where the customer is in the

pipeline or why they didn’t buy. We’ve seen managers insistently repeat, “Did you

close?” to focus the salesperson on getting the deal (and perhaps to humiliate him or her).

This may be the way you were taught sales and sales management. It may even be the

way you manage sales. You might even be able to make your numbers most of the time.

But there’s a better way.

Questions to Consider

To what extent do you manage sales as a numbers game? Is this working for you?

What data do we now use to measure the value of sales activities?

How do you know which sales activities are—and aren’t—creating value?


Chapter 2

Viewing Sales

As a Process

“Sales process” means different things to different people. To most sales managers and

salespeople, the sales process comprises “the things salespeople do” to move customers

through the sales funnel. Many sales managers think of the sales process as the sales

funnel or pipeline, as in the question, “Where is ABC Company in the sales process?”

From the organizational standpoint, sales is a process for producing customers. More

specifically, it is a process for finding, winning, and keeping customers. In general and

although there’s overlap:

marketing finds customers

sales wins customers

service keeps customers

Exhibit 1 illustrates this “production process,” which takes inputs (people who may need

your product) and adds value to transform them into outputs (customers).

Exhibit 1

Sales Is a Process for Producing Customers


Let’s enrich our definition a bit, to make it more precise and useful:

The sales process is the set of linked, measurable activities which

the organization uses to find, win, and keep customers.

This definition is useful because it enables us to:

Consider the work involved in each sales activity, and connections among

activities

Identify the role of each activity in finding, winning, and keeping customers, and

the inputs and outputs related to each activity

Develop ways to measure each activity’s cost and the value it creates for

customers

You may be put off by defining sales as a production process, but please stick with me.

Yes, “producing customers” and “adding value to inputs” may sound operational or even

mechanistic. After all, we are talking about people—your customers. Yet this view will

enable you to create value for those people like no other approach to sales.

Call Out

The sales process includes everything your company does to find, win, and keep

customers (not just what salespeople do).

Here’s an example of what I mean. You’re no doubt familiar with the Customer’s

Journey, the path that your customers travel in moving from lack of awareness of your

product and the problem it solves to becoming customers. As you know, customers don’t

care about your problems (such as making your numbers); they care about their problems,

including the kind that your products can solve for their company.

At the start of their journey they might be unaware that they have a problem, unaware

that solving it should be a priority, and unaware of your company’s solution. They need

your marketing and sales process to make them aware. At each stage of their journey,

prospects need your company’s help, and sales and marketing should provide it.

However, an organization’s sales process is not necessarily set up to do that. (In fact, it is

set up more to perpetuate the numbers game.) As a result, the motives of buyers on the


Customer’s Journey and the activities of sellers can actually repel one another (as shown

in Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2

The Customer’s Journey vs. the Sales Process

Prospects want help on the journey they make from being people who are unaware of or

uninformed about the problem your company solves (“suspects”) to being people who

have solved that problem with your product or service (“customers”). To the extent that

your sales and marketing activities provide that help, they create value for the customer.

To the extent that they do not, they create waste. This is great news, because once you

commit to creating value with your sales process, the whole game changes. It changes

from the numbers game to the value game.



How do I currently think of our sales process?

What are the stages in our Customers’ Journey?

What is our sales process—our set of linked, measurable activities for finding,

winning, and keeping customers?

How do our sales activities match up with our Customers’ Journey?


Chapter 3

Measuring the Value

Created by Your Sales Process

Sales and marketing activities become truly customer focused when you commit to

delivering value through them. To do this, you start by assessing those activities based

on the value they create for prospects. You also assess the value they create for your

organization. You then need to link sales and marketing activities so that they lead

prospects step-by-step through the Customer’s Journey.

This makes selling easier. At some points, persuasion, which is what most people think

of as selling, will be called for and that’s partly why you have salespeople. However,

persuading people who are ready to take the next step is much easier than persuading

people who are not. And more of the former is an improvement over more of the latter.

The key to making sales easier is figuring out how your customers can receive more

value from your process and realize that they have received it. Consider two questions:

How do you know when the offers on your website, product information, sales

calls, customer needs analyses, and other activities are creating value, and if these

need to be improved?

How do you know when salespeople are calling on accounts for months at a time

whether they are truly creating value for your company?

Answer: You measure the value that prospects give you in response to those activities.

Those activities aim to influence prospects’ behavior. Therefore, value is created when

the prospect take an action.

Call Out:

Value is created when a prospect takes an action you want them to take.

You may recognize this as the direct-response model of selling: when the prospect mails

the bounce-back card or calls the toll-free number, the activity worked. What I’m

discussing resembles that, but given the Internet and today’s methods of tracking and


analyzing data, you can measure the value that your activities are creating at far more

granular levels.

Why do that? Because you can see which specific activities do and don’t work. You can

use ongoing analysis to continually improve every part of your sales process. This is

managing sales based on data, not opinion, on codified experience, not on what we think

is happening.

This is how you can ensure your salespeople are doing what is necessary to make quota

every day, rather than being forced to make it up at the end of the quarter with deals and

promotions.

This is possible because prospects “pay” you for the value you create for them by giving

you five things that are precious to them (and to you). You can measure these five things

at the behavioral level, compile data based on those metrics and know whether or not

specific activities are creating value for specific prospects. These five things are:

Attention: In today’s market, you need surefire ways of getting prospects’

attention. Is your Website getting the right kind of visitors? Is your lead

generation drawing the attention of the right prospects? Do prospects draw other

people’s attention to your site? You can measure these things.

Time: Prospects’ time is even more precious. Do they spend time on your site?

Which pages interest them most? Do they spend time with your salespeople, on

the phone or in person? Do they put your proposals on their meeting agendas?

Do they make time for you?

Information: If your sales process gives valuable information, you should get

valuable information in return—not only contact data but honest information

about the prospect’s problem, your product’s fit, and their strategies, budgets,

motivations, and objections.

Cooperation: We’ve all experienced sales situations where the fit between

product and problem, the chemistry between salesperson and prospect, and the


timing, and even the planets line up beautifully. Then you have most sales

situations. Resistance is the norm. So if you are gaining cooperation, you are

delivering value. Cooperation is evidenced by prospects giving you their

attention, time, and information, and moving forward on their journey.

Commitment: This is what every salesperson wants. But if you measure

commitment only in purchase orders, you’re measuring only final results. You

want to measure commitment in terms of what prospects do for you in return for

things you do for them in the sales process. Commitment reflects salespeople’s

practice of “tying down” points with the prospect (“If we could deliver the

product as you specify by that date and at that price, do we have a deal?”). In

addition, tracking broken commitments and the underlying reasons can yield

valuable information about your product, pricing, service, and sales problems.

Here is great news: your organization is already getting these five valuable things from

prospects! What’s missing are ways of measuring and analyzing that value and ways of

conducting experiments that will help you find surefire ways of creating more of it.


How do we now measure the value that our sales process is creating for

prospects?

Do we develop and deploy sales and marketing activities designed to get

prospects’ to give us their attention, time, information, cooperation, and

commitment?

How could we improve the capabilities of our sales process, given that we want it

to create value that prospects will “pay for”?


Chapter 4

The Role of

Marketing in the Sales Process

I’ll state this as simply as possible: The role of marketing should be to make selling

easier. Everything marketing does—in product development, Web-based and other

communications, advertising, promotion, pricing, packaging, positioning, lead

generation, or any other activity—should make selling easier.

Call Out

The role of marketing is to make selling easier.

This is especially so given that most prospects now turn to the Internet for much of the

information they used to get from salespeople. Knowing this, most sales organizations

take Web-based marketing seriously, yet few B2B companies (in contrast to B2C

companies) use this interactive marketing medium to their full advantage.

Certain “show-the-flag” activities, such as trade show booths that fail to generate

business and product literature that no one reads, don’t make selling easier. They also

waste resources. At least some of what marketing does can actually make selling harder.

Poorly devised value propositions, hard-to-navigate Websites, and leads that sales cannot

use hamper sales efforts.

How can marketing “make selling easier” in this context?

Here are five ways:

1. Perform only value-adding activities: Marketing activities that create value

help prospects on their Customer’s Journey. Marketing can add major value in

the early stages when generating awareness, nurturing relationships, explaining

your value proposition, establishing your credibility, and deploying calls to action

are important.

2. Measure the value created: Measure the value that marketing activities create,

rather than only the volume of activities or questionable metrics like exposure,

reach, and recall. To measure value, you must measure prospects’ responses in


click-throughs, requests for information, submission of contact data (say, in

exchange for a white paper or survey), telephone inquiries, and live or virtual

meetings. Measure the attention, time, information, cooperation, and commitment

prospects give you.

3. Locate leads and prospects: While the idea that marketing finds customers,

sales wins customers, and service keeps customers should not be rigidly adopted,

it should be adopted. That way, marketing has a productive role in the sales

process and a stake in its success. The goal of locating and nurturing high-quality

leads and prospects can erase the image (and, when it exists, the reality) of

marketing as an “ivory tower” function. It will also make selling easier.

4. Share goals with sales: Sales is far more accountable for results than marketing.

This is wrong, and it creates a gap between sales and marketing. If marketing is

responsible for locating leads and prospects, then it should be held accountable

for the number and quality of the leads and prospects and for how it produces

them and for the value of those leads and prospects.

5. Collaborate more closely with sales: Someone needs to be responsible for

nurturing leads to the point in the Customer’s Journey where they are likely to be

won through selling efforts. These “drip marketing” efforts can occur in a variety

of ways, often via email and the Internet. They are less personal and less labor-

intensive and thus less expensive than sales efforts. But the handoff to sales must

be smooth, which calls for levels of collaboration between marketing and sales

which are rare in most companies.

Sales and marketing often work at cross purposes. This problem cannot be solved by

redrawing the org chart or asking them (again) to collaborate. It can be solved when they

sit down to develop a joint understanding of the end-to-end sales process. It can be

solved when they develop operational definitions and conduct specific, linked activities

that create and measure value for prospects and customers. It can be solved when they

experiment with small improvements to these activities, see some success, and

institutionalize productive ways of working together.



What is the role of marketing in our sales process now?

In what ways does marketing now make selling easier? In what ways does it

make selling harder?

What have we done to increase collaboration and coordination between marketing

and sales? With what results?


Chapter 5

Three Root Causes of

Sales Problems

Whether in manufacturing or in sales, at its heart, Lean is a problem-solving process. It

begins with clearly defining the problem to be solved—without trying to find the

solution—and by finding data and evidence around the problem. You may have heard

about “visualizing the flow” in Lean. This is done so problems can be seen. Things then

proceed to locating the root cause of the problem—still without trying to find the

solution—and to gaining agreement regarding the root cause. With the problem and its

likely cause clearly defined, you develop a solution that may remove the cause and

eliminate the problem. (I say “may” because process improvement uses small

experiments to test solutions and then implements the best, most cost-effective ones.)

This is not the way that most “sales problems’ are defined as evidenced by the prevalence

of the usual fixes to sales problems. As noted, the usual fixes include sales training,

CRM or SFA software, personnel changes, sales contests, redistributions of accounts or

territories, tweaks to the compensation plan, and similar standard responses. Those fixes

generally address symptoms (if that) and at best improve part of the process if in fact

there was a problem with that part of the process.

Call Out:

Process improvement aims to gather evidence that uncovers root causes of sales problems

in order to develop countermeasures that actually work.

In contrast, process improvement aims to identify the root cause of sales problems. At a

high level, here are the three most common root causes of problems in the sales process

that I have experienced:

Lack of consistent definitions of value and results: As noted, most

organizations have not clearly defined “a lead” or a “qualified lead” and many

have not even defined “a profitable customer.” In addition, the value created by

the marketing and sales process is not defined or measured—or even considered


as value. In many organizations, measuring the “close ratio” is as close as sales

comes to measuring results (beyond weekly and monthly sales figures).

Lack of data that indicates what is and isn’t working: The previous root

cause—lack of definitions and process measures—leaves sales managers without

the data they need to discern which activities are creating value and which ones

aren’t. The adage, “Half of the money we spend on advertising is wasted, but we

don’t know which half,” applies to most sales activities. In practice, marketing

keeps crafting value propositions, product literature, and promotions—usually

with little or no input from sales—and sales keeps following up, making calls,

submitting proposals, and trying to close. Without data all they can do is “try

harder.”

Lack of mechanisms for improving the quantity and quality of deals:

Without a process comprised of activities that match the needs of prospects at

specific stages of the Customer’s Journey, and without data on the value created,

management cannot improve the process itself, nor the quantity and quality of

deals. To solve problems, management turns to the usual fixes. To increase sales,

management adds more resources or increases activity.

In manufacturing, improvement is achieved by eliminating waste. In marketing and sales,

improvement can be achieved by eliminating waste (brochures no one reads, sales

proposals no one buys, etc.) and by enabling customers to receive and perceive more

value (for example, through better value propositions, reduced purchasing risk, and

quicker response to their needs).

Organizations need processes for two reasons:

First, to create predictable results with trained employees performing work in a

consistent way (so outcomes can be understood) with affordable resources.

Second, to continually improve those results by systematically identifying

problems and needed improvements in the work or materials, and by responding

to evolving customer needs.


Call Out

Process improvement works by understanding the relationship between activities and

results.

In other words, an organization needs a process to create a result and a process for

improving the process—a feedback loop of data on the work being performed, on the

results that the work is creating, and on customers’ evolving definition of value. This

approach contrasts sharply with endlessly searching for sales superstars, admonishing

salespeople to work harder, and launching end-of-sales-period promotions. Instead it is a

genuinely new approach that relies on critical thinking, hard data, and rigorous analysis.

The good news is that this approach pays off dramatically over time, as you will see in

the next section.


How do we now go about defining and solving sales problems?

What do I consider to be the root cause of our sales problems?

What process do we have for improving our sales process?

What data do we have about the characteristics of prospects who buy versus those

who don’t?

What data do we have about whether we are creating any value for our prospects

as we work with them?


Chapter 6

Case Example: Business to Business

Software Company

Background: Several years ago, I worked with a small B2B software company. They

had been riding the Internet wave, and decided to take a serious, “process oriented”

approach to growing their business. They hired a well-known sales training company to

help them define a sales process, instituted 20 percent annual growth targets for the new

account sales department, and began investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay-

per-click marketing to generate leads with the goal of achieving that 20 percent growth.

Presenting Need: Unfortunately, new account revenue did not increase. It became clear

their investment in lead generation was not paying off. The president complained

salespeople would not follow the process they were given when he was not watching over

them. The sales manager was a sharp and aggressive fellow. He had been with the firm

since the beginning, and was good closing deals. Yet (like the salespeople who worked

for him), he was challenged by the low quality of the sales opportunities.

Research: Unfortunately, the increased flow of leads stressed the team’s ability to

respond properly to all of them. Unable to determine which were most likely to close,

they tried to treat them equally, grinding away at the leads, generating call-backs to offer

demos, software trials, and price quotes. Salespeople became frustrated when prospects

ignored their calls. Sales forecasts proved unreliable. Activity quotas were introduced.

People worked harder. However, new account sales results did not increase.

Root Cause Analysis: At this point, my firm, SPC, was hired to diagnose the situation.

After appropriate interviews and data gathering, we identified the root-cause of the

problem: The sales process had been designed primarily around pushing product, and was

disconnected from customer value. Customers naturally resisted salespeople’s attempts to

push them to do things they were not ready to do.

As a result, salespeople began to resist their training and the demands of the process and

the activity metrics imposed on them. The process provided no means of learning what


customers wanted, or of experimenting with alternative approaches. The numbers game

was producing a diminishing return, as it always does.

Countermeasure: We helped the salespeople and the marketing department to gather

additional Voice of Customer data. This provided insight to characteristics that enabled

prospects to be ready to buy, as well as what prevented them from being ready. The steps

of the sales process were redesigned around the Customer’s Journey. Instead of pushing

prospects to do things, salespeople could ask questions, and make enticing offers of

information, depending on the specific answers they received. The offers were designed

so prospects who responded to them were more likely to be qualified than those who did

not.

In addition, prospect qualification criteria were redefined in terms of observable

characteristics of the deals, rather than vague generalizations. For example, the

salesperson’s access to decision makers could be defined in observable ways, such as

“Don’t know who the decision maker is,” or “Never met the decision maker,” or “Met the

decision maker.” As a more detailed example, the observable characteristics of a

prospect’s decision making process was defined as:

Don’t know their decision making process

We only know part of their decision making process

The main contact is only one of the many people involved

A committee has been formed, and our contact has influence

Main contact is the decision maker/signing authority

Test Standard Work1: As the work progressed, the sales manager and a few of the

salespeople began to try out the new qualification criteria on active deals. The way it

worked, each observable characteristic was given a score from 1 to 5, with the higher

score corresponding to the likelihood of winning the business. This gave salespeople the

ability to prioritize opportunities (those with the highest scores were prioritized the

highest. It also generated insights about what made various prospects more or less likely

1 Standard Work – a set of shared knowledge and respectful agreements about the best way of performing a

task or accomplishing a specified objective.


to close. A statistical analysis of the data salespeople collected via their qualification

criteria suggested improvements to the qualification criteria as well. Sales forecasts

became more reliable.

The new process focused on offering information prospects could actually use rather than

pushing them to buy when they weren’t ready. It also helped salespeople know which

prospects would be easiest to close, and what they needed to do to make the rest of their

prospects easier to close. Salespeople liked the process.

Deploy Standard Work: The flow of pay-per-click marketing leads returned to earlier

levels. The client asked us to redesign their sales training and software tools to support

the improved sales approach. The focus of sales meetings also changed. Marketers now

attended the sales meetings, and the focus shifted from sales activities alone to the quality

of the prospects and salespeople’s interactions with them (guided by the observable

qualification characteristics). For example, salespeople complained they had difficulty

enticing a prospect in an insurance company with a case study from a manufacturing

company. In addition, if the methods for elevating the quality of a given prospect

(provide case studies, expand relationships, initiate a business presentation, etc.) failed to

elevate the quality of the prospect to the required level, salespeople were expected to

“walk away” if the prospect was still not yet ready to buy (a difficult thing to do when

you are being measured only on activity).

Continually Improve: As the flow of business turned up, many observations were made

about how to continue to improve. For example, case studies from different industries

were developed and tested successfully with prospects in those industries. Statistical

analysis of qualification scores revealed that the observable criteria for the decision

making process was not as predictive as expected. After a lengthy discussion, the

question was changed as follows:

To what extent do we understand the decision making process?

They don't know their decision making process


They have one, but we don't know it

We have partial understanding, but they won’t share more

We have partial understanding, and they will share more

We fully understand their decision process

This improvement (among others made to the qualification criteria) were more predictive,

and even gave salespeople a “secret” early indication of potential success: would the

prospect fully share their decision making process with them? Sales management and

executive management became more interested in process improvements, because they

knew that money would follow.

Results: With no additional marketing expense, and no change in the quality or quantity

of sales opportunities, the new account close ratio doubled, and deal size and margin

increased. Revenue from new accounts doubled. After two rounds of improvement in

qualification criteria, forecast accuracy exceeded 90 percent. The client applied the new

selling methods to existing accounts, which increased per user revenues and profitability

after the initial installation (with virtually no additional sales cost).

Most importantly, managers became more alert to how they managed the sales process,

realizing how important it is to check salespeople’s methods and data to ensure learning

took place. They also realized the value of sales meetings that produced a constant stream

of data around the high-impact, common causes for salespeople’s successes and

challenges.

Approximate Return on Investment: Consulting fees amounted to approximately

$200,000 over eight months. Increased profitability exceeded consulting fees in less than

12 months. Two-year return on investment (ROI) exceeded 600 percent.


Chapter 7

Sales Process Improvement Engages Other Functions

In many companies, salespeople find themselves in a position resembling that of a

competent waiter in a restaurant that doesn’t have its act together. The value proposition

is wrong, so customers arrive with the wrong expectations. Or the place won’t take

reservations or books too many tables, thus creating long waits. Or the hostess is surly.

Or the menu misrepresents dishes. Or the kitchen is too slow, too fast, or incompetent.

Meanwhile, the waiter is the face of the restaurant and is supposed to “take care of” the

customer and is dependent on the customer for his income.

I am saying that often “sales problems” do not originate in sales. They start with faulty

or fuzzy value propositions, poorly targeted lead-generation programs, problems with the

product’s reputation or customer service’s responses to problems, and so on. I’m not

saying that salespeople never cause problems, but rather that much of their job involves

dealing with problems they have no control over. It is management’s job to solve those

problems. Again, this is about making sales easier and it is the sales manager’s role to

gain the cooperation of relevant functions within the organization, such as product

development, manufacturing, installation, customer training, service, credit, and billing.

Call Out

Processes improve when root causes of problems are found and addressed, no matter

whether they are within or outside of the sales department.

To gain the cooperation of other functions, start with a clear understanding of your sales

process and your total end-to-end value chain, from product development through

manufacturing, delivery, billing, and service. Develop an understanding of the role of

every function and its impact on customers and the sales process. Then examine the

entire system as a whole.

Voice of the Customer (VOC)—by which I mean all sources of data and information on

the customer experience—can be a particularly powerful tool in this regard. So can

process improvement experts in your organization. If your company has used Lean or

other quality improvement methods, you probably have in-house process excellence


specialists, as well as operating managers or business unit heads with experience in the

practical application of process improvement. Be aware, however, that process

improvement must be adapted to sales.

Here are suggestions for working with other functions to solve problems in the context of

process improvement:

Serve as a customer advocate: Rather than noting how hard life is for your sales

or service people, learn how hard it is for the customer. As the sales saying goes,

“If the salesperson says it, maybe it’s true. If the customer says it, it’s certainly

true.”

Use VOC and other data: Use VOC and other data to show that the problem

warrants concerted action. Cite the revenue impact in lost business, and the costs

in wasted time, energy, expertise, and money—for the organization and, when

possible, the customer. Estimate the positive impact of fixing the problem.

Discuss the process and undesirable results: When you discuss problems,

people aim to avoid blame. When you discuss process and “undesirable results,”

you shift the aim to understanding what’s happening. This is not merely a

communication technique: in an organization it usually is the process, not the

people, that causes problems. Most people are not out to undermine the

organization; rather, they are working in suboptimal processes.

Collaborate on finding and fixing root causes: This principle underlies all

process improvement methods. If you can locate the root cause of a problem and

eliminate that issue, condition, or action, you will eliminate the problem.

Learn a bit of the language and a few tools: I would not suggest trying to learn

the foreign language of process improvement. But terms like undesirable results

and tools like “Five Whys” have a purpose. They aim to clarify thinking, usually

by defining what people mean when they say “undesirable result” or “quality” or

“waste” and to gain respectful agreement around causes of problems and how to

solve them. The tools replace intuition, opinion, and Band-Aids with

experiments, learning, and solutions.


As these suggestions indicate, there’s nothing mysterious about process improvement and

there’s no reason not to apply it to sales. Process improvement assumes that to fix a

problem you must look upstream and downstream. You must look to your customers and

focus on creating value for them. And you must understand the root cause of a problem

and eliminate it.

When management takes this approach, salespeople need no longer behave like waiters in

one-star restaurants, shucking and jiving the customer, explaining and excusing screw-

ups. Instead, they can perform like conductors in symphony orchestras, cuing and

guiding the various customer-facing parts of the organization to perform to the

customers’ highest expectations.


Overall, how would I rate my salespeople in terms of their effectiveness and

efficiency in performing their sales activities?

What are the most persistent impediments to sales that I and my salespeople see

as originating in product, pricing, or organizational problems outside of sales?

What have I or my predecessors tried to do in the past to solve these problems and

remove these impediments? With what results?


Chapter 8

Leading Salespeople

to Process Approaches

Salespeople are crucial to the success of sales process improvement, yet they are often

skeptical of such efforts. This is understandable. A process approach often repels

salespeople because it is a process approach; it stresses data, rationality, order, and rigor

to people drawn to the interpersonal, emotional, roving, unpredictable nature of selling.

Many salespeople are salespeople because they dislike regimentation, or even sitting at a

desk.

I am not discounting the expertise of people selling sophisticated products and services. I

am, however, pointing out that many salespeople prefer the Lone Ranger image. They

enjoy not only the challenges of representing one organization to the people of another

organization, but the image of that individual.

Salespeople (and sales managers) are thus often skeptical of any initiative that aims to

introduce analytical rigor to sales. Recall that sales has been subjected to “the usual

fixes,” which have often been as oversold as they were poorly targeted. Your salespeople

are quite likely to say, “Give me a bag and put me back on the road,” when asked to

engage in structured process improvement.

Call Out:

Leadership from sales managers is essential to getting salespeople on board with process

improvement.

For all these reasons, leadership by sales managers is essential to getting salespeople on

board—and to the success of sales process improvement. How do you go about this?

Fix salespeople’s problems: Salespeople can cite plenty of problems in the sales

process. (Just ask!) These often involve poorly targeted marketing initiatives,

lack of administrative support, poor communication with service, and so on.

They have an inherent interest in seeing these problems solved.


Start with existing VOC data: Process improvement calls for data, but don’t try

to turn salespeople into “data monkeys.” Instead, ask them about their customers.

See if they can agree on the four to six major steps their customers take on their

Customer’s Journey, and determine what that means to your sales process. Also,

every company I have seen has underutilized existing VOC data. Find the data

that already exists, and start using it!

Eliminate waste ASAP: Any sales function that hasn’t been exposed to Lean

process improvement has activities that are generating waste in one form or

another. There may be obvious bottlenecks and impediments to sales. Simply

matching sales activities to the Customer Journey can prevent salespeople from

trying to get prospects to do things they are not ready to do. It can also prevent

them from wasting resources on demos, samples, and proposals on prospects who

are not ready for them. Such moves can rack up early, easy wins and demonstrate

the value of the initiative to salespeople.

Use process improvement to make selling easier: This is not a slogan, but a

goal. And if it is just a slogan, salespeople will know it. The goal of improving

the sales process should be making selling easier. If it doesn’t, then why would

(or should) salespeople support it? Their jobs are hard enough already.

When you take a true process improvement approach, what you are undergoing will seem

different. If you don’t feel some resistance to and discomfort with the method, then you

are probably not using process improvement. These approaches rely on analytical

methods familiar to few sales managers. It’s not the same old approach.

It is, however, an effective approach, although it cannot succeed without the support and

buy-in of sales managers. This requires a leap of faith, because sales differs so much

from other organizational functions. That said, these methods have such an excellent

track record in those functions—and in sales functions where they have been rigorously

applied—that it would be a shame to pass them up just because they are different and

require a bit of change and leadership to implement.



What are the most common complaints from salespeople regarding leads and

prospects?

How could managing sales as a process make selling easier for my salespeople?

How have I demonstrated leadership skills that would be useful in changing the

way we approach and manage sales and marketing?


Chapter 9

Maximizing the

Likelihood of Success

Through hard-won experience, I have learned not to pursue “big bang” approaches to

applying Lean process improvement to sales. Big bangs often end with a whimper. Such

approaches call for defining the New Sales Process upfront and fomenting organizational

change. They can create unrealistic expectations, divert people from their jobs, and

command too many (or too few) resources. Also, while change can come about through

a big bang, lasting change usually occurs incrementally over time.

Yet improving the sales process must be a conscious decision and an actual initiative. It

doesn’t happen by itself. It requires changes in thinking and behavior. It requires

changes in what is measured, what is rewarded, what customers experience, and what

resources are dedicated where. You, the sales or marketing executive, cannot do it alone.

A companion piece to this document—How to Generate Revenue Growth through Lean

Process Excellence: A Guide for General Managers—speaks to the role of general

managers and business unit heads in improving the sales process. The other companion

piece—Bringing the Power of Process Improvement to Sales and Marketing: A Guide for

Process Excellence Managers—speaks to the role of quality and process improvement

specialist in these initiatives. You may want to read these documents for the perspectives

they offer. Also, the document for process improvement specialists provides more

technical information than this one and the one for general managers.

Sales managers play the linchpin role in sales process improvement. They are

responsible for the organization’s revenue, and they have the respect and trust of the

salespeople. So, here are seven things you can do as a sales manager to initiate a sales

process improvement effort and to maximize its chances of success:

1. Gain the commitment of senior management to the initiative, and buy-in from

other functions that affect the sales process, particularly marketing and customer

service.


2. Approach your internal quality improvement experts or process excellence

department with a specific problem, and with a general interest in how process

improvement might apply to sales and marketing.

3. When speaking with process improvement professionals, ask them for plain

English explanations of technical terms.

4. Be sure that process experts, salespeople, and marketing people collaborate on

operational definitions and problem solving. Also, ensure that “planners” and

“doers” work together and are jointly responsible for outcomes.

5. Do not ask anyone to design a sales process for you and do not design a sales

process for salespeople to follow; you and your salespeople must fully participate

in any effort to develop a sales process.

6. Educate yourself about quality improvement and process excellence; you don’t

need to master the technical aspects, but you should be familiar with the record of

these methods, particularly in your organization.

7. Get external assistance from people experienced in applying process excellence to

sales; external experts provide experience gained in prior client engagements as

well as objectivity that’s impossible to access in-house; they can also help to

resolve, or at least clarify, internal conflicts.

Finally, there is no single set of steps that works in every company, because every

organization has unique circumstances, and unique personalities as well. Therefore, it’s

best to develop an approach that works in your specific circumstances. However, as long

as you are creating value for customers and for your company, managing on data and

facts, experimenting and continuously improving, you will be moving in the right

direction. This movement will position you to achieve gains in sales productivity and

results which you did not believe possible, and which are in fact not possible with other

methods.



How would I rate my sales and marketing organization’s readiness to manage

sales as a process (e.g., high, medium, low)?

How would I rate my larger organization’s readiness?

How would I rate my own readiness?


Is Your Organization Ready for Lean Process Excellence?

If you would like more information about the topic of this paper, we have prepared a

website devoted to it: www.salesperformance.com, where you will find several years’

worth of articles, case examples, and blog postings.

Next Steps to Consider

Suggest that your President or General Manager order and read How to Grow

Your Business Through Lean Process Improvement in Sales and Marketing – A

Guide for Chief Executives and Business Unit Leaders, the companion volume

written specifically for company executives.

Suggest that your head of quality improvement or Lean Process Excellence order

and read How to Bring the Power of Lean Process Excellence to Sales and

Marketing, the companion volume written specifically for them.

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

http://www.salesperformance.com/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.salesperformance.com/


About Michael J. Webb

Michael J. Webb, President of Sales Performance Consultants, Inc., founded the company after a

lengthy career in field sales, sales management, and sales training. In addition to deep sales and

sales management experience, Mike has held professional certification in production and

inventory management and quality management, and holds a B.S. in mathematics from

Southeastern Missouri State University. Mike is the author of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma

Way (Kaplan, 2006), a pioneer in applying quality and process improvement methods to sales and

marketing, and a frequent speaker at quality and process improvement events.

About Sales Performance Consultants, Inc.

Founded in 2002, Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. helps companies with business-to-business

(B2B) sales organizations who want to improve their processes for finding, winning, and keeping

customers. Built on Lean and process excellence platforms common to many companies, 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.

Mike and his team have helped divisions of DuPont, Pentair, Tyco, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and

dozens of other companies to identify bottlenecks, eliminate waste, improve sales results, reduce

sales costs, and compress time to market. Our goal is never process for the sake of process, but

improvements to sales processes that enable companies to find more of the right customers at

lower costs and higher margins.

Documents

Find, Win, and Keep More Customers Using Sales Process ...op.salesperformance.com/downloads/webb-sales-manager-lean-proc… · Introduction: Using Sales to Create Value for Customers