Achieving Greater Efficiency With Your Sales Force

The following are some common issues within the selling function where past practices are being followed:

• Budgets can be achieved with fewer salespeople or fewer working days. The other two days are non-productive through misguided activities.
  
  
• The low-value accounts are excessively over-serviced, without intervention from sales managers.
  
  
• Customer acquisition is ad hoc and sporadic, usually attracting lower range customers with a view to building them.
  
  
• Customer accounts are not maximised to achieve full value from them, particularly where companies sell a range of products.
  
  
• Non-selling tasks heavily outweigh actual selling time.
  
  
• Salespeople are equipped with traditional selling tools, and in many cases insufficient tools, particularly for new business acquisition.
  
  
• Selling practices do not reflect the buying practices or preferences of the customer.
  
  
• The skills of many sales forces fails to meet a reasonable level that would support new business acquisition or sustain customers in rapid market change.
  
  
• Documented procedures and knowledge that support the selling function outside of document flow are non-existent or minimal.
  
  

Change-resistant sales individuals are often lacking in real sales ability and have purely survived through business longevity. Well behind in sales education and current practices, they are the main cause of stagnation.

Scary as it may sound, you will find there is only one or two real sellers in the team and the rest have been over reliant on longevity and products that had a good differentiator in the early days.

Consequently, the above traits can be carried on unchecked by managers as they are considered to be ‘the way the sales force operates'. How differently would managers think if they realised what opportunities and revenue are being lost through inefficiencies?

Regardless of past successes, new products and competitors are continually succeeding your business, however the pressures of this are not usually felt until a few years down the track - when it is too late.

This is where potential gains through implementation of efficiencies begins

How do you address the problem? What approach is needed to extract knowledge from your sales force amicably? How do you move forward in commercially realistic time frames?

1. Through the immediate implementation of measurement systems and gathering of sales intelligence. All contributing factors to the selling function need to be tracked.
   
   
2. Systems of best practice conduct with accounts and planning tools need to be installed and will show how sales people should operate in the market.
   
   
3. Everyone needs to be consistently trained in the new methods.
   
   
4. The standards of your company's expectations need to be set into every detail of each staff members' role.
   
   
5. Staff members are then trained in how to sell in their specific market and given tools that will ensure new business acquisition.
   
   
6. Customers need to be provided with a sound business case that they can embrace.
   
   

Careful and timely implementation of the right tools, knowledge systems and information that is required to manage a successful and professional sales force prove to not only deliver efficiencies and bottom line savings, but considerable top line growth.

Organisations have reported that with the implementation of integrated world class systems and processes, they experience a 20-25% increase in results with improved profit.

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