Understanding the Sales Force

Yesterday, we discussed whether you can really get salespeople to change. I mentioned that the key rule was #9, Consequences, and that I would discuss consequences today.

It’s rare when a company isn’t using something for CRM, even if it’s an old version of ACT. In most companies, it’s not whether they are using CRM, it’s which CRM they have chosen to use and whether the CRM has actually been adopted. The CRM application of choice is completely useless to management unless the entire sales force is using it as intended.

Yesterday, I wrote about solving the sales performance problem. Today, I’ll write about solving the CRM problem. CRM is very problematic, not because there aren’t choices, but more because companies make bad decisions. Just a few of the problems with CRM are listed here:

A company’s executive team can have a positive or negative influence on the performance of the sales team. Each member of your executive team can impact sales in some small, or not so small way. Today, I want to talk about Chief Technology Officers, VP’s and Directors of IT. At first glance, you might not think that IT has much of an impact on sales and you would be correct. However, they do have a significant role.

Yesterday, schools were canceled, non-essential state workers were told to stay home, and businesses were asked to release their employees early. We told our employees that they could leave at Noon. It was quite a powerful storm and we were going to get in the neighborhood of 8-12 inches, all during business hours. Based on history, that is when drivers are most likely to become stranded on the roads. As late as 6 AM, they stuck with their 8-12 inch forecast, with snow scheduled to begin within 2 hours and intensify as the day wore on, snowing as heavily as 2 inches per hour during mid-day.

Last week I posted an article about the similarities between Meteorologists and Salespeople. This morning, while watching the recap of our latest snowstorm this analogy became even more obvious to me.

Yesterday, while speaking in DC, I asked my usual questions, but the response to one of the questions left me scratching my head. It wasn’t a new question; as a matter of fact, I’ve been asking it for years. And, as you can see below, I’ve been writing about the pipeline in various ways for years:

They are three separate things but not three distinct data points:

What your salespeople know – for certain – a data point. This is the information that prospects and customers provide – that proves to be valid – in response to your salespeople’s questions. For example, if one of your salespeople asks which competitors the prospect is speaking with, the answers could be as varied as:

As part of its sales force evaluation process, Objective Management Group (OMG) conducts a pipeline analysis and determines both the quality of the pipeline and the quantity of the pipeline. We ask each salesperson to submit 4 proposal-ready opportunities and then we run the analysis.

The statistics are staggering. In some sectors, fewer than 25% of all salespeople will make quota in 2012. Even best-in-class companies are lucky when fewer than 80% of their salespeople make quota. Are you OK with it when your own salespeople fail to make quota? There are a number of possible reasons for this widespread mediocrity and failure and, depending on the company, some or all of them may apply.