Sales Force Effectiveness

Improving the effectiveness of a company's go-to-market resources is often top-of-mind when searching for ways to increase shareholder value. We help clients improve their ability to attract, retain, and develop customers through the following focused initiatives:

Sales role clarification — Lack of clarity in the definition of sales roles is a significant and common inhibitor to sales effectiveness. When sales jobs are unclear, salespeople are often unsure of the company's priorities and are left to "make it up as they go". Blended sales jobs generally result in a salesperson gravitating to those aspects of the blended role with which they're most comfortable at the expense of other imperatives (e.g., managing existing accounts at the expense of acquiring new accounts). We work with clients to translate business objectives, go-to-market strategy, and customer requirements into clearly defined sales roles that enable selling resources to succeed.

Sales force opinion and activity surveys — A company's understanding of the opinions of their sales force or how selling resources spend their time is often grounded in anecdotal observations. Such observations can be helpful, but rarely tell the whole story. Answers to important questions such as "What do salespeople really think about our sales improvement initiatives?", or "How do salespeople really spend their time between selling versus lower value-adding activities?" often need more than drive-by anecdotes. We use sales force surveys to provide quantitative data that augments anecdotal observations, and gives management fact-based insights into various sales effectiveness improvement opportunities. These surveys are often used in conjunction with consulting projects focused on clarifying sales roles or designing sales incentive compensation plans.

Customer sensing — Not unlike understanding sales force opinion, a company's insight into what customers truly need and value from the vendor's customer-facing resources is often anecdotal at best, if not largely non-existent. Relying on your sales force to capture these insights can be tricky as salespeople can be motivated to preserve what they perceive to be their strong customer relationships and hide from those that are weak. As such, getting an accurate account of customers' views is often clouded by the biased filter of the salesperson. Customers are often more candid in airing their views to an independent third party as they too often seek to protect their working relationships with salespeople. We use customer interviews and focus groups, as well as customer surveys to give management clear insights into what customers expect as well as how well you're providing that support relative to the competition.

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