Optimizing

Sales Force
Effectiveness
A White Paper
 Optimizing Sales Force Effectiveness
Sales cycles are getting longer, sales productivity is declining and sales expenses are
increasing. Coping up with these pressures and still be able to post commendable
figures quarter after quarter is no small feat. Such performance can only achieved by
increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales force with continuous
productivity-enhancement measures.

This white paper discusses the best practices employed by the high performance sales
organizations to optimize the effectiveness of their sales forces. By adapting such
best-in-class practices, you too can improve your sales force effectiveness.

Create and Prioritize Sales Opportunities

High performance sales forces employ a standardized system to create, evaluate,

qualify and prioritize sales opportunities. On the other hand, less performing sales
organizations do not employ a standard system to identify opportunities, which is like
fishing where you want and expecting some fish to bite your hook.

High performance sales organizations also have well-defined methods to decide which
opportunities to pursue and which ones to avoid. This gives them a better idea of how
many resources to expend on a potential sales opportunity. By reducing their sales
expenses and increasing the number of sales, world-class sales forces demonstrate
high effectiveness.

Create a Strong Sales Culture

This might seem obvious but most organizations fail to put the spirit behind this
sentence into practice. A poor sales culture is the result of either a lack of power and
respect toward the sales people or absence of robust focus on sales as an important
value in the corporate culture.

Creating a strong sales culture requires a top-down approach from the CEO level. If
the management does not respect contribution of sales towards shareholder value, then
sales department will probably be relegated to a non-strategic status.

Integrate Sales and Marketing Processes

Misalignment between sales and marketing departments is the chief cause of

underperformance in many sales organizations. To improve the sales force
effectiveness, it is necessary to integrate sales and marketing functions into a single
seamless, standardized process.

Establish a sales knowledge management system with a central repository of sales and
marketing information such as accounts, contacts and opportunities. This increases the
salespeople’s knowledge of products, services, customer needs and the competition
they face. Make the sales process formal and document it. Let the organization know
and understand that the standardized process is important. Develop and implement a
standard approach to proposal generation and proposal management to increase the
sales leads and improve sales win rates.

Leverage Sales Information and Sales Process Management Systems

Effective sales forces utilize a range of sales information management and sales
process management systems to enhance their effectiveness. Various technology
enablers include incentive/compensation management systems, CRM, Sales Force
Automation, contact management software, and order/quote generation systems, etc.

Clear communication between client and various departments involved in the sales
process is very important to effectively deliver the value. Sales information systems
help in leveraging such information in sales processes. Developing and fine-tuning a
structured environment where the relevant information flows seamlessly from one
stakeholder to another is very important to prevent information overload and enable
information access.

Choose the technology enablers that best fit to the needs and requirements of your
organization’s business processes. Sales focused enablers such as analytics, forecast
management, and order generation help you streamline and formalize sales processes.
Marketing focused enablers such as lead automation management help you stay
focused on the needs and interests of your customers.

Similarly, individual enablers are also of great use in enhancing the effectiveness of
salespeople. For example, contact management helps sales representatives to monitor,
manage and prioritize sales opportunities and mobile personal information managers
provide sales reps constant access to the information needed engage the customers.

Measure Sales Effectiveness with Metrics and KPIs and Benchmark against the
Best-in-Class

Highly effective sales organizations are two times more likely to extensively use
metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and keep track of their sales
force performance. They also identify the core skills needed to maintain their
competitive advantage and invest heavily in benchmarking methodologies to master
those skills.

Invest in Standardized Processes in Sales Collateral and Proposal Management

Improving your sales force’s knowledge of products, needs and wants of your
customers and the competition they are about to face at the marketplace may seem
obvious but very few organizations take a standardized approach to develop such a
course of action. Many organizations might in fact be very comfortable about their
sales force’s ability to understand the needs of the customers so as to position the
offering in the best light.

However, highly effective sales organizations understand that there is always a room
for improvement in this area. It is common knowledge that the relevance of sales
proposal to the customer’s needs and the effectiveness of the sales representative in
presenting the solution are two most important factors that influence customer’s
decision-making. No wonder most of the high performing organizations invest so
heavily in proposal generation management and sales collateral.

Sell to High-Level Executives

To improve the effectiveness of your sales force, train them to get to high level
executives who have a say in decision-making. Coach them to have meaningful
conversations with them and sell solutions rather than products. And this needs a total
change in the way your sales force presents its offerings. Train them to position their
products and services as strategic solutions to convert customers into strategic buyers.

Link solutions to the buyers’ pains so as to motivate them to take swift decisions.
Such strategic value proposition needs a deeper understanding of the customer’s
needs, wants and requirements.

Leverage Talent

Effective sales organizations strategize around their human resources. They place
enormous importance to find, hire and retain the right talent and also in leveraging the
talent throughout the company.

Sharing information between high performing sales representatives and their lesser
performing colleagues, replicating the best behavior and processes of the top notch
performers and creating effective business models are three important practices that
are in-built into the strategic thinking of effective sales organizations.

Take a Holistic Approach

Optimizing the sales force effectiveness needs to be treated as a process rather than a
one-time activity. Having an operational excellence strategy in place and developing
robust sales processes and sales training systems is the best way to optimize the
effectiveness of your sales force.