It Ain’t Easy, Making Green

With apologies to Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog for that header, and apologies to you for the poor attempt at humor, I think we can agree that the road to sales performance improvement is a noble yet challenging path.

If you work in sales leadership or a sales performance improvement role, you know it’s not easy to properly select, prepare, manage, lead, and change a sales force to achieve sales growth.

True, right? There are so many factors to consider, so many levers to align and pull, and so much complexity to manage, that most leaders don’t know where to start, to truly make an impact. This is why we hear about top sales leaders turning over every 18-24 months.

This is also why there is so much thrashing in our profession, with leaders trying to push harder, faster, and longer to get better results. It’s why we tinker and settle for a 5% to 10% performance improvement–rather than overhauling to blow the doors off–and why we’re relieved when we hit such a small number.

I don’t admit this often, because I try to position and push to spur leaders to action and to think differently, but part of me truly understands and empathizes with this plight. I get it. It’s hard work. We’ve all heard the sales stats that are shared by many, such as:

61% of new salespeople take at least 7 months to ramp up
43% of sales reps miss quota
25.5% of forecast opportunities end in “No Decision”

~ Source: CSO Insights (report: http://bit.ly/cso2016)

I could go on, listing other research stats, but I’ll spare you. (That’s not a slap at industry analysts. I respect them and all the research that’s published. Frankly, I’d enjoy doing that work. I just know you understand the pain already, because you see and hear these stats daily, and you live it, in the field.) We also know from our experience that:

It’s hard to get time out of the field for training reps and managers
It’s difficult to get frontline managers focused on developmental coaching
“Flavor of the month” thinking often detracts from focused execution of initiatives that could help

I’ve read recently from AON that sales turnover is at a 5-year high. Yet we know that the costs of sales turnover are staggeringly high.

Clearly, in the sales profession, we’re not making enough progress and need to do something differently.

I know how to fix the problem. And I’m sorry.

I wish I had something flashy to say now. I wish I had a silver bullet or a new app or sales enablement software that would change everything. But I don’t. And neither does anyone else. (Having said that, sales enablement software can certainly be part of the solution to create efficiency, foster effectiveness, and enable and support the things I’ll talk about in this series).

The real solution is one that most don’t want to hear about or tackle. We’re not teaching enough of this in business schools. Very few current leaders seem to have exposure to it (or act like they do). It’s sort of arcane and only talked about in geeky circles. You probably know what I’m about to say from the title of this post:

The solution to our current sales problems and the vehicle for transforming your sales results is a Systems Approach to Sales.

When I say this, or remind sales enablement leaders that our work is really change management, I always feel like I should apologize or duck. But that doesn’t change the solution. There is an entire body of work dedicated to organizational performance improvement that we need to bring into the forefront of the sales profession, and stop operating on hope, half-implemented solutions, point solutions (unless part of an overall plan), and the harder/faster/longer method.

The Fantastic Four > The Four Sales Systems

There are quite a few systems in the sales performance ecosystem that a sales consultant can address. I’m not even going to attempt to discuss them all. I’ll focus on just four that commonly fall under the purview and span of control of sales enablers and sales readiness pros. They are the:

Sales Selection System (see Part 2 post here)
Sales Support System (see Part 3 post here)
Sales Learning System (see Part 4 post here)
Sales Management System (see Part 5 post here)

Why these systems?

Does compensation not matter? You bet it does. But it won’t radically move the needle if you have the wrong reps and don’t support them properly.

Does your GTM strategy matter, in terms of account assignments and territory design? Absolutely, and the same applies as it did for comp–even if the accounts are assigned well and territories are perfect, it won’t matter if the reps can’t execute.

Shouldn’t you tackle all the systems? Eventually, sure. But if you start with these four and ensure they are aligned and working, you can radically improve sales performance over the course of a year.

If these are all in place in your company, move forward. But I’m betting they’re not and that you can move the needle on the metrics that really matter, with these four systems, in your company.

In fact, I’ll go as far to say:

If a sales organization gets The Four Systems only 80% right, they will blow the doors off, YOY.

Are you ready? This is just the tee up. I’ll be back as soon as possible and take on the systems, one by one.

Author Note:

You can find Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here and Part 5 here.

Related Webinar – Watch the On-demand Replay!

Aligning an Effective Learning System with an Effective Selling System for Breakthrough Sales Results

I did a webinar on 2 of the 4 systems on The Sales Experts Channel via BrightTALK. You can watch it here.

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As usual, this is what I think. More importantly… What do YOU think?

I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts and experiences in the comments section. If you enjoy this post, please feel free to share it with others.

Thanks for reading, be safe out there, and by all means… let’s continue to elevate our sales profession and evolve, elevate and professionalize the Sales Enablement function.

Mike Kunkle

:: transforming sales results ::

Let’s get connected:

Blog: http://www.transformingsalesresults.com (right here)
LinkedIn Publisher Posts: http://bit.ly/MikeKunklePublisher
Sales Transformation Straight Talk Webinars: http://bit.ly/STSTonSMM
The Sales Experts Channel Webinars: http://bit.ly/SalesExpertsChannel
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekunkle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mike_kunkle
SlideShare: http://bit.ly/MK-slideshare

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Transform Your Sales Results with a Systems Approach – Part 1 (Overview)