x-ray your sales

X-Ray your Sales Sales Audit, essential for sustainable Sales Success

Philippe CARRON

Gandamo bvbaProsper De Troyerlaan 28 9070 Destelbergen Belgium [email protected] www.gandamo.be

X-RAY OF SALES I WHITE PAPER - � OF �2 8

The Author

Most documents, presentations or keynotes on sales productivity immediately jump to solutions and recommendations.

But every sales department is different:

• the products or services offered

• the market segments and customer profiles

• the company culture

• the personalities of the team

If you don’t know where you are, how can you get where you need to be?

Before recommending improvements you need to know the exact status of the sales team today.

Audits are done for every aspect of todays’ business:

• from Finance to Logistics

• from Production to Legal

• from IT to HR

• except… for Sales

Why?

• Perception: - Success or failure of Sales strongly depends on individual talent and capability - Training, Hiring & firing will solve most Sales problems

• Not knowing what to audit

• Don’t rock the boat and lose best sales people in the process

• Believing some of the Myths on Sales

In this white paper I want to:

• de-bunk the myths surrounding sales which actually hold back productivity

• explain why a sales audit is actually a good idea

• elaborate on the way an audit will be done and what results you can expect from it.

I hope this white paper will give you some insight and if you ever have questions or need help with your audit, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards,

INTRODUCTION

Philippe Carron has a uni-que sales experience of more than 30 years.

He has a Master in Elec-tronics Engineering at Ghent University and a Post-Graduate in Busi-ness Management at Leuven University.

He started working at IBM in 1984, where he quickly moved into the sales de-partment.

In 1991 he joined Compaq where he became EMEA director for Large Ac-counts in 1994.

Between 2000 and 2009 he had different roles as Managing Director or Di-visional director at com-panies like Oracle, Vutek Europe and Tele2-Ver-satel.

In 2009 he founded his own consultancy firm Gandamo.

Philippe succeeds in combining the operational needs of sales and marke-ting with strategic know-ledge and insight.

His dual experience as Sales Director and Mana-ging Director allows him to have a broader view on Sales operations.


SALES PRODUCTIVITY : MYTH VERSUS REALITY

SALES MYTH I: SALES IS AN ART

Top Sales People are like artists … they are born not trained

Consequences:

• The need to hire top “artists”: difficult to find and keep; expensive

• Prima donna attitude: difficult to manage and give direction; no team spirit

• Little knowledge and best practice sharing

• Sales is a “Black box” where Management needs to keep the “Faith”

• Increase productivity only by hiring top talent and firing bottom part of Sales Force

• Not all new hires perform: some past success generated by quality and fit of surroundings

SALES MYTH II: SALES GROWTH IS ABOUT … MORE!

More People, more Leads, more Calls, more resources, more budgets, more…

Consequences:

• “More” costs

• “More” resources

• No guaranteed increase of Sales: Law of diminishing returns

SALES MYTH III : SALES GROWTH IS ABOUT PRESSURE

Increased Targets, Frozen or reduced Budgets, more intensive and frequent Control, Management through “numbers”

Consequences:

• Demotivated Sales people

• Erosion of the Sales force

• Pressure is passed on to customer base, resulting in customer loss

• Costly errors

SALES MYTH IV : SALES MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT (SALES) NUMBERS

Sales Management focuses on Sales Targets, Sales won, Revenue, Pipeline instead of ”activities”, which impact results

Consequences:

• Sales numbers cannot be managed: They are a “measurement”, merely a direct or indirect consequence of actions

• Little or no impact on actual sales results

• Sales Management is ineffective

• Lack of leadership


SALES AUDIT: REASONS & BENEFITS

6 REASONS

6 BENEFITS

Identificationofareas for

improvement

Assessment ofimprovement

effort:resources,budgets,…

Newideas,anoutsiderview

BetterStrategicdecisionmaking

KeepsSalesTeamalert

AlignmentwithBestPractices

IncreaseSales

ReduceCost-of-Sales

IncreaseSalesMargin

ReduceRisk(Accountsreceivable,fraud,etc…)

Reduceemployeeturnover in

Sales

ImproveForecastAccuracy

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Benjamin Franklin

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


HOW DOES AN AUDIT WORK?

WHEN DO YOU BENEFIT FROM AN AUDIT?

What are signs that an audit might be beneficial?

• Missing targets: in a frequent systematic way

• Difficult collaboration: between two or more departments (e.g. marketing and sales)

• Unclear "value" proposition: difficult to differentiate, with larger discounts/less margin.

• Unreliable forecasting: Inconsistent sales approach and related processes, with More sales people not reaching their targets, decreasing productivity

• Lost opportunities: too many lost deals

• High erosion of sales personnel: demotivated sales people leaving the team

• Lack of automation tools: No or little technology in support of sales

• Channel strategy: Little leverage through alternative channels

• Due diligence: as part of a potential acquisition or increase in capital

AUDIT STRUCTURE

An audit will analyse 4 activities (Planning, Lead Management, Sales and Retention).

Each analysis will focus on 3 areas: Processes, Execution and Resources

AUDIT FLOW

“If you can’t measure so-mething, you can’t under-stand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

H. James Harrington

“Vision without action is a daydream.”

Japanese Proverb

“Efficiency is doing things right; Effectiveness is doing the right things”

Peter Drucker

LEAD

MANAGEMENT

PLANNING

SALES

RETENTION

PROCESSES EXECUTION RESOURCES

Benchmark Recommendations report

Primary Audit

Datacollection240 questions

AnalysisData

missing?

Audit Report

DevelopAction plan

Follow-upAudit

Improvementproposal


ACTIVITIES ANALYZED

PLANNING Planning Sales is crucial and mistakes in this stage, dramatically impact sales.

If you walk off in the wrong direction, you will never reach your destination.

So this is the first area to analyse in terms of processes, resources and execution. From Market segmentation to Go-to-Market, from channel selection to Commission Plan, any improvement will have a major impact on results.

LEAD MANAGEMENT This is the “fuel” that makes the sales engine run.There are two focus points:

• Lead Volume: too low, the fuel tank will become empty and the engine stalls.

• Lead Quality: too low (wrong fuel), your engine will stall AND you will face useless costs.

So volume is important, but quality is even more crucial.

SALES Today, informed buyers with Internet access control the “Sales Cycle” not the seller.

“Buying Cycle” is a much more appropriate name. A clear methodology and mapping of the Buying cycle is critical to succeed.

At Gandamo, we developed a method called “Seasonal Buying Cycle” (SBC).

Two things are key in using this methodology:

• Knowledge on exactly where your prospect is in the Buying Cycle. This will determine his priorities, focus, actions and expectations.

• An action plan and approach fully aligned with the prospect’s position in the Buying cycle.

Failing to do this will lead to wrong actions, misunderstanding, bad communication and ultima-tely lost sales.

RETENTION Keeping & developing customers is much easier and cheaper than finding new ones. But many companies still “chronically” neglect this.

• Protect: by proving to the customer that he made the right decision

• Implement: take care of delivery, installation and communication, showing your commitment and involvement

• Develop: a long term, mutually beneficial relationship.

“Tactics without Strategy is the noise before defeat”

Sun Tzu

“Sales without planning is planning for no sales”

Philippe Carron, Gandamo


FOCUS AREAS

PROCESSES

• Maturity: look at the quality of the process and make sure it is designed for maximum efficiency. Look at the maturity level of each process, because a mature process saves costs, ef-forts and resources.Maturity can be measured using CMM (Ca-pacity Maturity Model).

• Impact: each process has to serve the overall objectives of sales. All necessary processes need to be present and superfluous processes need to be removed. Having the right processes has a major impact on sales productivity.

EXECUTION

• Efficiency: How efficient is your execution? Any wasted effort, resource or money?

• Effectiveness: Are the defined objectives met? If not, what can be done to increase effective-ness?

RESOURCES

• People: the human factor determines the quality of execution. Have you got enough resour-ces? With the right profile and training?

• Budget: Have you got enough investment in the right areas? Lead generation, training, team building, etc…

• Tools: does sales have the right tools to do a good job? Do you have all analytics in place to steer your team in the right direction, focused on actions with impact, not numbers?


RETURN ON INVESTMENT

The combined impact of improvements in each area and each activity creates an avalanche ef-fect, amplifying the impact.

An average 1% improvement in each area and for each activity already generates 12,7% Growth in Sales results.

That is why the ROI of a sales audit is always positive, … unless your sales team performs per-fectly today?

FINALLY

A Sales Audit:

• is not a cost, but an investment with a positive ROI

• Increases your Sales Results

• Generates clear cost savings: freeing up budgets to invest in sales growth

• introduces sustained sales success: your sales success becomes repetitive

• Leads to more reliable forecasts: stronger pipeline by better management of the sales cycle

Now it is all about getting the right support (internal & external) for managing the changes, de-veloping an action plan and executing it.

If you want to give feedback or need any help, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Good Luck !

CONCLUSION

E-mail: [email protected]

Address:

Gandamo bvba Prosper De Troyerlaan 28 9070 Destelbergen Belgium

Website:

www.gandamo.be

CONTACT

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