How much control do you have over your sales process? (You do have one, right?)

Sales Development Projects

Typically, Directors call us in when they recognise that their sales department can’t deliver what they need, usually because of a lack of specialist knowledge about sales systems and process. We don’t just identify the causes of sales problems, we work within business resources to fix them.

Whether you are operating a simple direct sales model, or a complex multi-channel with many routes to market, we can work within your resources to improve your sales results.

Before we start, we will review your:

  • Customer Value Proposition
    Is your value proposition understood by your sellers and how are they communicating it as a sales proposition? How well do they understand precisely what it is about your sales proposition, that your customers are buying?
  • Sales Process
    Do you have one? Is it appropriate for your sales proposition? How well is it understood and followed by your sellers? Does this match your buyers’ buying process?
  • Sellers’ Capabilities
    How suitable are your sellers for their sales role? Do they have the specific sales skills they need to take a prospect through your sales process? How are your sellers improving their sales skills? Do your sellers have Personal Development Plans that they are engaged in?
  • Sales Planning
    Do you have a sales plan? What was your process for developing it? Who was involved? How does it support sales activity?
  • Metrics and Measurements
    How do you keep score? What numbers are you counting, and how do you use them to incentivise performance? Who gets to see them and where in your business are they posted / how are they communicated?
  • Operational Marketing
    Are you generating enough prospects to sell to? Is your sales function responding to inbound leads generating by marketing, or are they proactively generating their own prospects to sell to?
  • Sales Lead Qualification Process
    How are you prioritising your sales resource? Are your sellers wasting their time with prospects that will never buy from them? Are you qualifying sales leads in, or are you qualifying sales leads out?
  • Marketing and Sales Collateral
    How well does this support your customers buying needs? Does it communicate your value proposition? Is it designed around your sales proposition or your prospect’s needs? How up to date is it (and what percentage of your hard copy ever gets used?)
  • Sales Management systems
    Are these generating top performance from your staff? What percentage of sales management time is spent coaching sales staff, and what training have sales managers had to perform this? Are your sales managers also performing a sales role, or are they exclusively line-managers?
  • Sales Meetings
    What type are yours? Here are some characteristics that may apply: Stand up, sit down, meetings with minutes, agendas or running orders, briefings, reporting what’s happened (past focused), preparing for what is going to happen (future focused), what numbers, who contributes, sharing, learning, noisy or quiet, regular, infrequent, who attends?
  • Routes to Market
    What sales channels are you using? (have you tried?). Who takes responsibility for managing them? How aligned are they with each other?
  • HR systems
    Are your sellers’ roles boundaried and aligned to steps in your sales process? Do you have a recruitment process for reliably appointing top performing sellers? What’s your compensation model and how have you arrived at it? Do you have an appraisal system for measuring your seller’s performance and how are you managing poor performers? Do your top performing sellers ever leave you?
  • Reward Mechanisms
    Are you relying on financial rewards to provide motivation for your staff? How well does your existing compensation structure reward and incentivise, and how often do you change it?
  • Prospect Data Management Process
    Are sales leads slipping through the cracks? How are you managing your customer data? Where are you collecting your prospecting data from and how are you making the best use of it?
  • Customer Services Delivery
    Who takes care of post-sale fulfilment and operational issues? Is delivery of this distracting your sellers from their selling role? What level of delivery non-conformity does your business have, and who takes responsibility for eliminating these?
  • Company Culture
    Using the “it’s how we do things around here” definition. Does your culture support the activity of your sellers, or does it detract from it? How well does your sales department interface with your marketing, product/service development, finance departments?

Yes, there are a lot of questions. Fortunately we also have the answers, and our answers will relate specifically to your business and market sector.

After completing your plan, we will schedule time with you so that you can fully understand how to implement the recommended actions. If there are parts of the implementation process that you want help with, we will be pleased to deliver it for you as a project

“Our Sales Improvement Plan was much more detailed that we were expecting. It gave us just what we needed to focus our efforts. It covered all the things about sales that we didn’t know existed” – CF, Chief Exec

Call us directly, or complete the contact form below, for a discussion about how this will help you identify which areas of your sales function you need to focus on.

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