Business Coach
By: Miller Heiman
Sorting Fact from Fiction
Everything is important right now. At least, it can feel that way. But sales organizations that operate with this statement at the helm can be pulled into a vicious undertow of fruitless labor.
When the pace of the market seems frantic, it’s often the natural recourse to sync the company’s pace with it. Leadership often insists that more activity will keep the company afloat and that all activities are important. But not all activities are created equal. In fact, in a company that puts everything as high priority, some activities may actually funnel resources away from the activities that are effective. Not everything can be completed with the limited resources sales organizations have available to them. Of those resources, time is perhaps the most important and inflexible. Companies may be able to procure additional funds or add additional team members, but there will never be an instance where additional time is granted. The reality is that when leaders find that their company’s time and resources are pinched, priorities must be established and adhered to.
The “everything is important right now” line is one of many masquerading as sales truth in today’s economy. Beliefs like using offers and deals to accelerate a sales cycle, or that it’s all about timing, have settled comfortably into many organizations. But the reality is that these “sales truths” can have adverse effects.
Contrasting Fiction with Facts
An unprecedented year, 2010 perpetuated and aggravated a number of half-truths that many sales organizations now consider as standard operating norms. However, results from the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study pulled the rug out from underneath these statements, revealing them to be more hype than truth.
Now in its eighth year, the Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study is the world’s largest study of selling and sales management best practices ever produced. It is a repository of the actions taken by top-performing organizations that have managed to produce top-tier results in both good and bad economies. By examining the half-truths against the actions of World-Class Sales Organizations, those that were more likely to see growth in key performance metrics such as sales quota attainment and average deal size, we can construct a picture that reveals why these statements are so dangerous to sales organizations looking to navigate one of the most challenging economies to date.
The Top 10 Misleading Statements
1. Continue to apply more pressure to the sales force and this will drive results. To many sales leaders, the notion of constantly driving the sales team to perform by adding more pressure may seem straight forward. Sales leaders, however, will see more results if, instead of emphasizing the need to produce, they reinforce the need to focus on the customer and their issues. Sales leaders need to constantly ask their sales force to position themselves closer to the customer’s needs and objectives.
The 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study revealed that 90 percent of World-Class Sales Organizations agreed their salespeople have a solid understanding of their customer’s business needs, whereas only 46 percent of all respondents agreed. A better investment of sales leaders’
time is to ensure that the front-line has an eye trained on the customer’s needs, as opposed to instilling a frenetic need to constantly perform. When the sales team’s attention is devoted to providing solutions aligned with client objectives, real results are produced.
2. Salespeople should just be happy to have jobs right now. The economy has taken a rough toll on sales organizations, felt all the way at the front line. As some organizations may see it, jobs are few and far between so a sales force that is employed must be a sales force that will work hard to prove its worth. But often overlooked is the fact that when there is no choice, there is little motivation. In addition, top-performing salespeople will always have options to leave, so it is important to incent the work force to maintain standards of performance. Aligning appropriate incentives to match corporate goals is a solid way to properly incent and maintain the work force.
3. You need to sell to the top in today’s environment. It’s true that the economy has made the buying process more complex than it used to be – a strong statement, since the process was already complex to begin with. As the study reveals, the best practice is to find the key decision maker, wherever that individual happens to be within the organization. More than three-quarters of World-Class Sales Organizations agree that their sales force consistently accesses the right decision makers in large sales opportunities, as opposed to only 36 percent of all other respondents. While selling to the top may be a priority in some cases, the best option is to constantly reassess where in the organization the buying decision rests.
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