Sales Force Effectiveness

What does sales force effectiveness really mean? It is more than simply being focussed on achieving sales. It immediately implies an outwardly focussed organisation that understands its customers' needs and buying criteria, that seeks to maximise the conversion of potential sales opportunities in its target markets, and is successful in meeting goals and targets for generating profitable revenue.

Sales focussed organisations have a deep understanding of the markets they service and the value they bring to customers in those markets. The sales culture permeates all aspects of organisational life.

CompAssess Sales Performance has the capabilities and track record to assist you with each of the elements of Sales Force Effectiveness.

The Underpinnings of Sales Effectiveness

The relationship between sales effectiveness, sales behaviours, job fit and tools and processes is illustrated below.

Sales effectiveness is realised through sales focused behaviours and actions. It is important to understand, however, that organisational behaviour is in turn underpinned by individual behaviour and competencies as well as the processes and tools that enable sales oriented actions to be effectively undertaken or completed.

Individuals engaged in specific sales oriented actions must be endowed with the requisite competencies to be effective in both completing the specific actions and supporting the desired sales culture.

Likewise behaviours and actions will only be effective if there are appropriate business processes and tools that reinforce actions or enable an action to be completed with relative ease and efficiency. If the actions that underpin a sales focused culture are not well understood or difficult to complete, then they will tend to fall away.

CompAssess has a strong track record in building the sales effectiveness of our clients in all the above areas.

Our Services

CompAssess provides a range of advisory services to help you improve your organisation's sales performance. These cover areas such as:

• Sales Strategy & Planning
• Customer Value Analysis & Account Planning
• Sales force Structure & Design
• Sales force Assessment & Development
• Motivational Analysis & Development
• Sales force Management
• Channel Analysis & Development
• Profitability Analysis
• Sales Management Coaching

Removing the Roadblocks

The reality is that there are many factors or 'roadblocks' that can adversely affect sales performance. For example, your sales force may have the skills but not the motivation to meet sales targets. Conversely, they may have the skills and motivation but other obstacles such as poor sales support, inadequate systems, lack of sales leadership, uncompetitive products, etc, are getting in the way of increased sales and profits.

More fundamentally, you may feel that your organisation does not have the processes to identify and capitalise on growth opportunities or that the sales force is not properly aligned with the business strategy or key customer segments. For example, to succeed in new markets your sales force may need to adopt a "consultative" or "solution" based selling approach whereas the existing sales force may be geared towards high volume, low value "transactional" sales.

Our Approach

CompAssess can help you to identify and remove the roadblocks that are impeding improved sales performance. In doing so, we take a holistic approach and look at all the "levers" that are typically used to drive sales performance such as:

• Market Insight - understanding the market, identifying gaps & opportunities
• Competitive Advantage - identifying customer needs and building internal capabilities
• Sales Planning - developing strategies/initiatives to increase sales
• Sales force Organisation - deploying the right type & level of resources to capture sales
• Sales force Impact - developing skills/capabilities of sales force, maximising productivity
• Pipeline Management - managing the deal pipeline to achieve sales targets
• Sales force Motivation - providing clear objectives, coaching, informal/formal recognition

Our approach is to work with you to identify the key issues and capability gaps around these levers as well as determining the underlying causes. This provides a framework for agreeing on the one or two key levers that are most likely to have the biggest positive impact on your sales performance. We can then focus on strengthening your control over these specific levers by developing and implementing practical solutions in these key areas.

Step 1 - Identify Problem

In some cases, an organisation may have already identified the key issues or roadblocks impeding sales growth. In these cases we can move quickly to help you develop and implement appropriate solutions.

In other cases an organisation may need help to pinpoint the key roadblocks. In these cases we work with you to complete an environmental scan to identify the key issues and causes of underperformance.

This can take the form of a survey of the sales force, one-on-one meetings with key stakeholders or facilitated workshops with small groups depending on your objectives and the level of involvement required. This process can also be embedded into a staff selection and development program that CompAssess may already be running with you.

The results of the environmental scan are used to identify and prioritise the key issues/gaps and their underlying causes. For example, the key issue could be that your organisation is not identifying and converting new growth opportunities in the market. The cause could be ineffective market research and sales planning processes.

Step 2 - Develop Solution

Once the key issues and underlying causes have been identified and prioritised, we work with you to develop practical solutions that suit your requirements, culture and business objectives. This may involve developing something specifically for your business such as designing a new sales force structure to align with your business strategy and customer segments. Alternatively, we may identify more generic third party products and services that meet your needs such as sales automation software to improve sales efficiency.

The essential difference between CompAssess and many of its competitors in the sales consulting market is that we start with the problem and then find the most appropriate solution rather than starting with a fixed suite of solutions and trying to fit them around your problems.

Step 3 - Implement Solution

Once the solution has been developed, we can also help you with implementation if required. For example, we can provide project management and facilitation resources to roll-out a new sales planning process or conduct behavioural assessments to determine which sales personnel are a 'best fit' to roles within a new sales force structure.

Why CompAssess Sales Performance?

CompAssess is a results driven consulting organisation. We have worked with over 80 of the Top 200 companies in Australia. We focus on developing practical solutions to business problems that enable organisations to improve business performance. Our future relationship with you depends on it.

Our consultants in the sales performance area have worked as sales managers and sales directors in a variety of organisations and industries. They understand the day to day issues faced by most sales functions and have developed sales performance solutions covering a range of problems and situations.

Some of our major projects have included:

• Assessing the sales capabilities of over 400 sales personnel at Pacific Brands (in progress)
• Developing a new sales planning process for one of Citibank's major businesses across Asia
• Restructuring the sales force at Vodafone into acquisition and account management teams
• Restructuring the account management team for Citibank's local mortgages business
• Developing go to market sales strategies for several new businesses/products
• Implementing account planning processes and systems
• Developing sales performance measurement and reporting systems
• Advising on development of customer relationship marketing (CRM) systems

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» Contact CompAssess for more information on how we can help you Build Sales Force Effectiveness.