Tool Box
Issue No. 37 - October/November 2007
Team sales tactics beat 80-20 rule
by Rex Buckingham
Too often, any review of the ‘sales team’ happens after all the major decisions have been made. The sales team is merely the facilitator of a process, quite often seen to be menial, of selling the products/services which the business has developed.
We at ‘colourthinking’ believe this approach loses much energy. We advocate an entirely new approach, one of engaging with the sales team from the beginning and delivering, to all personnel, sales-oriented key performance indicators in addition to their line KPIs!
The ‘us and them’ mentality pervades many organisations. It may be ‘office/warehouse’, ‘sales/office’, sales/warehouse’ or, as so often occurs, sales/office/warehouse/management’ working in separate camps.
The sale made at the right price for the right margin can be lost if the whole fails to deliver – if the office invoices the wrong price or accounts incorrectly applies a ‘stop supply’.
In this scenario, there is loads of wasted energy and opportunity until everyone ‘gets it’. Nothing happens until a sale is made: then opportunity just keeps seeping (or gushing) out!
To institute new thinking, old paradigms and conclusions have to be recognised and if not abandoned, given a good shake up. Today’s sales results are a response to the ‘negative Pygmalion*’ behaviour of management through time.
The overall sales responsibility needs to be assumed and shared by more senior people within an organisation. Sales management has to be elevated and separated; it must not be lost within the general management. It needs to be resourced with skills, experience and funding.
The ‘marketing function’ needs to wear some of the responsibility in this, for too often mismanaging the potential of the sales force but also for not being assertive enough in making sure sales is more competently represented within the senior managem...
