At Sales-Link, we literally wake up every day thinking about lead generation and sales. While this may not be what’s on your mind first thing, sales should be on someone’s wake up list. You want a sales leadership team that believes an inclusive environment will ensure all engines are on and the team is ready for take-off when you decide you want your company to climb to the next level. So when was the last time you looked into your checklist for readiness? It starts with the processes.
A PROCESS IS NEEDED SO YOU CAN CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVE YOUR QUALITY ORGANIZATION
If there is no consistency in your work processes, problems will keep popping up every other year, which is why we see companies changing the way they do sales, as often as buying a new phone or computer (in sales that is often enough). The revolving door of firing and hiring their lead generation and sales team, changing system, and trying another new approach from scratch is nothing but a formula for chaos.
Chaos happens when there is no continuous process improvement, no metrics, and as a result, no collaboration between marketing, lead generation, sales, and operations. So the cycle for failure takes a position and starts over again. These are signs of failure and signs for potential issues that will appear at key strategic milestones for your organization, i.e. growth aspirations geographically or additional service offerings. They will slow down your future initiatives to grow your company. You want to be sure all engines are working so when you are ready to take off in a new direction, it can happen fast.
I know it takes effort to manage a sales team and you may see more gloomy days ahead, particularly in sales departments compared to others, but when those bright days suddenly burst through, that’s the time to reflect on how it all happened. We can’t ignore the fact that some of your successes will be from “low-hanging fruits” that just appear out of nowhere. But they do come from somewhere because you have to be in the right place at the right time, taking the right steps to respond to a need. So there is some ingrained sales process when the opportunity presents itself. So let’s start there.
THERE IS AN INGRAINED PROCESS WITH SALES YOU CAN START WITH
Any process that is followed and practiced daily will improve your operations. People who are paying attention as they go through the steps of a process will find areas that can be improved upon. Keep practicing and you’ll end up having a continuous improvement process for quality in your company. I learned about this long ago while studying Dr. W. Edwards Deming. He is known as the leading management thinker in the field of quality and was also a statistician and business consultant whose methods helped hasten Japan's recovery after the Second World War and beyond. How’s that for a job?
Deming has left his mark and for those of us who follow his practices, our lives are made much easier due to his teaching methods. Once you learn that well-worked processes are the secret to having a strong, quality-based function, you will operate this way in many of the tasks you take on.
“My background in process improvement prompted me to work within my own company to build a system around the best sales practices,” said Susan Walsh, CEO, and Founder of Sales-Link. “This coupled with a good understanding of the importance of data has really given Sales-Link it’s purpose in life.” Sales-Link builds processes around a base sales engine tool called Pharma BDi. It comes with a built-in process but also is flexible to blend in customers’ existing processes so you don’t have to start all over again. It is prescribed for business, marketing, salespeople, and operations who need to run or work with a sales organization and want to have a sense of order to what they do, day in and day out.
Typically, somewhere between step 7 and 14 is where you capture a new client
When it comes to hiring your sales team, Susan is known for asking “do you need a hunter or a farmer?”. For those of us in sales, this saying is used to explain that the hunter is extremely good at finding new relationships and the farmer is great at nurturing existing customers. Then, there is the rainmaker- one who knows how to win business by creating relationships with people who can provide a warm introduction. Unfortunately, when leadership sets out to build their sales organization, the thought of the hunter/farmer comparison and the tools and data needed is often not addressed in-depth until after the fact when ugly pesty issues start showing up. Further, as the business changes after years of hunting new business, leadership needs to know when to bring in the farmers and nurturers.
Lead generation (aka hunting of new business) and the sales function make up an integrated process. We also want to emphasize the operations support team’s role, but there’s enough here with lead generation and sales that we will save operations for another article. There are plenty of articles already written and should be read about relationships and what is needed for a quality organization. Susan believes in “collaborate more and silo less.” There is no room for divisiveness in a quality organization. But more on this later.
COLLABORATE MORE AND SILO LESS
Lead generation and sales belong together and shouldn’t be treated as separate functions. One needs the other to survive. And in order to survive, there must be a process for them to work together. What is seen without collaboration most often is a rivalry spreading slowly into the organization. Talking with CEOs, who have experienced this in their organizations, have said they wished they had squashed any divisive actions they witnessed early on. If you don’t take care of it at the onset, the differences start growing, communications break down, and eventually, something or someone is blamed. Sometimes it’s the CEO.” Susan watched this happen first hand to a CEO who ignored his gut and let a bad vibe in the company continue for way too long.
Workers without a process are destined for failure and this is where the problem begins to plant bad seeds. The good news is that a fix can be put in place quickly. But, we can also attest to the fact that it’s very challenging to incorporate a process into sales departments that have been in place for some time. The CEO and Senior Leadership need to believe in and show support of the process and take time to observe interactions. When you see repeated conflict or note a lack of a healthy interaction between people or departments, ADDRESS IT EARLY ON. Listen to your gut and remember that your staff not only needs your input but wants to see that you care and notice potential breakdowns that can have an effect on the healthy organization you are building.
YOUR STAFF NOT ONLY NEEDS YOUR INPUT BUT WANTS IT
Leadership and the culture of the organization are key to the health of the sales department. Leadership paints the setting, and as departments are built and people are added, it begins to take shape. It’s important that balance and inclusions are implemented so no one person dominates or blocks growth because of personal bias and insecurities. This can be a silent killer in your organization.
A great work environment (even if virtual) is very important to your salespeople. Tools are probably the second most important gift you can offer, and you want your team to be operating on all cylinders. The right tools to get the job done fast and more efficiently will help those salespeople who want to win new business. And if you invest in a tool, be sure the sales team is using it and managers are endorsing and managing with it. You don’t always have someone in the organization who is an expert or knowledgeable of the best sales tools for your specific team to get the job done, so you want to be sure that there is first and foremost a process. That process will make it much easier when the time comes to picking a tool to help execute that process. If you follow a process, the tool will come.
BUILD A COLLABORATIVE, INCLUSIVE, AND EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION
Last, it is really important to ensure people in charge of sales have a strong background in process, methods, and metrics. They should want to analyze the data and activity of the sales team. You may have purchased the best system to take your sales organization to the highest level, but if no one is there to enforce it, then you are missing a big piece in making your organization collaborative, inclusive and effective!