- April 24, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Spoiler Warning: This article is about my company and its new product. Stick around though and I think you’ll realize that it’s just as much about your company as it is mine.
One of the proudest moments of my professional career occurred Sunday, April 21, 2013, when my team at Objective Management Group (OMG) introduced our brand new Sales Force Evaluation product to 120 OMG Partners from around the world. That we were in Boston, just one day after the second bombing suspect was captured, made it even more incredible!
Partners getting their first look and using their phones to vote their approval.
We have introduced our share of evaluation and assessment tools during the past 23 years, but this introduction was completely different. My team worked tirelessly for nearly an entire year on our latest gem and our Partners received it, with even more enthusiasm than we felt, when we completed the project just 48 hours earlier.
Why all the excitement?
Forget for just a minute how incredibly impressive the product looks. It’s the information that sets it apart from, well, even our previous sales force evaluation product, which was already the best on the planet. Of the many differences between our new and old products, the one I like the most is this one: While our old product was findings-centric; the new product is answer-centric. Why should you care about any of this?
Our Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis answers 4 critical questions about your company:
- Can our sales force be more effective?
- How much more effective can we be?
- What will it take to accomplish that?
- How long will it take to accomplish that?
If you don’t care about the answers to those 4 questions, then you must have already cashed out or retired.
In order to answer those 4 questions, we answer these additional 19 questions along the way:
- How Does Sales Leadership Impact Our Sales Force?
- What Are Our Current Sales Capabilities? (here is an image of the summary page of this chapter)
- How Motivated Are Our Salespeople and How Are They Motivated?
- Can We Generate More New Business?
- Can We Be Better at Reaching Actual Decision Makers?
- Can We Shorten Our Sales Cycle?
- Can We Sell More Consultatively?
- Are We Selling on Price and Who Can Become a Value Seller?
- Is Our Value Proposition Consistent?
- Can We Close More Sales?
- Do Our Systems and Processes Support a High Performance Sales Organization?
- Can We Be More Consistent with Our Sales Process?
- How Well Are Our Sales Leadership Strategies Aligned?
- Do We Need to Change Our Selection Criteria?
- Can We Improve Ramp-Up?
- Can We Improve Our Pipeline and Forecasting Accuracy?
- Can We Improve Our Sales Culture?
- Who Can Become More Effective in Their Roles?
- What Are the Short-term Priorities for Accelerated Growth?