I was having work done to the exterior of my car recently. While I waited, I struck up an interesting conversation with the owner of the company doing the work. I expressed an interest in how the company produced the quality of work for which they were known. With excitement, he invited me back to his shop to watch a car run through his facility. The process this organization implemented for doing their work fascinated me. Every step in the process was logical and clearly defined. Each department and individual had assigned responsibilities; each executed their part of the process with exacting precision. The result was flawless work.
The Sales Revolving Door
The owner bragged that quality work is why he was able to provide an unconditional guarantee for his company's services. As we walked back to the waiting area, the conversation turned to sales. He told me he had three sales people: One who had been with him for eight years, the other two he described as part of the "sales revolving door."
When I asked what he meant, he told me that besides his one successful guy, he couldn't keep salespeople. He estimated he had run through at least two-dozen salespeople in the last eight years. Being curious, I asked about turnover in his shop. He told me he hadn't lost a person in over three years. Hmmm.
So, I'm talking with this successful business owner where employee turnover in his shop was dramatically lower than in his sales department. The obvious question was, "Why?" His response, "Good sales people are impossible to find. The people I find simply can't produce." My response? "It may not be a people problem. I'm curious, what PROCESS do your sales people use to sell?" After a few seconds of blank staring, he responded, "I have no earthly idea."
If you don’t have a clearly defined sales methodology, your sales and marketing teams are on two totally different wavelengths and your customer’s buyer's journey isn't clear, then you’re leaving your sales reps out in the wind and rain. More than likely, they’ll quickly pick up on these things and lose faith things will improve (despite your plans and intentions). Defining a sales strategy that coincides with marketing and mapping out the buyer’s journey will help mitigate sales rep turnover, revenue loss, and poor morale.
How People View Selling
Here we have a business owner obsessed with
It should be no surprise that CSO Insights' Sales Management Report shows that among sales organizations surveyed, only 44.8% of reps in organizations using random sales processes make their quota. Business owners like the one referenced in this blog have to change the way they view selling. Just like any other aspect of their business, the process for selling has to be clearly defined. The same obsessive approach to the process applied to production, accounting, or inventory control has to be applied to the sales organization. If they don't, they'll continue to live with low sales production and high turnover.
As a value-added service to our partners, Altaworx can help implement a formal sales process that will produce measurable, sustainable results.
