Five Categories of Sales Effectiveness Drivers. 3 Forces that Influence your Winning Sales System.

March 31, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Sales Management 

The Sales System and the Sales Effectiveness Drivers
Sales effectiveness drivers fall into five categories, each with a specific impact on the sales organization. Definer drivers set up the organizational structure and salesperson roles. Shaper drivers—hiring, training, and coaching practices—affect salespeople directly. Enlightener, exciter, and controller drivers affect the activities performed by the sales force.

Definers: A Successful Sales Organization Has Clearly Defined Sales Roles, Giving Salespeople a Straight Line of Vision Definer decisions define the sales job by clarifying roles and territories. Does the sales force need to increase in scale in order to go after additional markets or give more time to new products? Will specialization increase its effectiveness with important, large customers? Should it be redeployed to reflect changing marketplace demographics? Successful definer decisions are consistent with and reinforce company marketing and sales strategies. Generally, making definer decisions before addressing the other four categories of sales effectiveness drivers helps ensure that the decisions you make concerning the other driver categories will be compatible with and reinforce the definer decisions.

Shapers: A Successful Sales Organization Has Excellent Hiring, Training, and Coaching Programs That Are Aligned to Encourage the Right Values, Attitudes, and Capabilities in Its People Sales leaders hear it often enough: “People are our most important asset,” or “In the twenty-first century, companies will win in the marketplace because they are winning the war for talent.” If you believe these statements, as we do, then the shaper category of sales effectiveness drivers is critical, as these drivers influence the skills, capabilities, and values of the sales team.

Enlighteners: A Successful Sales Organization Has Good Information and Uses It Effectively to Help Salespeople Understand Customers and Be Successful How well do salespeople know their customers’ buying processes, attitudes, and needs? How do salespeople decide who to spend time with and what to do for each prospect or customer? Enlightener drivers include processes and systems that provide salespeople with customer knowledge, enabling them to understand the marketplace, prioritize opportunities, solve customer problems, and use their time more effectively. Enlightener drivers often use information technology (IT) to capture knowledge and thus increase sales impact. The use of IT in sales is constantly evolving. The heavy, complex, and rigid systems that burdened rather than assisted sales forces in the past are giving way to lighter, nimbler, and more flexible solutions.

Exciters: A Successful Sales Organization Has Inspiring Sales Leaders and Motivating Incentive Programs That Encourage Salespeople to Work Hard and Achieve Exciter drivers inspire and motivate the sales force.

Controllers: A Successful Sales Organization Has Effective Processes to Ensure that the Entire Sales System Stays on Course

Every organization needs a control system. In addition to the firm’s overall culture, such control is what ensures that salespeople, working largely unsupervised, continue to do what they are supposed to do over time. Controller drivers direct sales force activities and behavior, which, in turn, determine performance.

The Forces Behind the Sales System
Forces and decisions within your World of Sales will influence your Sales System. External forces include customers, competitors, and the environment. External events create both opportunities and threats. Opportunities can arise, for example, when new customer segments emerge, competitors go out of business, helpful technologies appear, or a booming economy creates new possibilities. On the other hand, companies can be threatened when sales strategies become dated as customers change their buying processes, competitors attack profitable market segments, or an economic downturn reduces customer demand.

Company strategy also affects the Sales System. Company strategies include setting corporate business goals and objectives, launching new products, redesigning and relaunching existing products, entering new markets, and merging with or acquiring other companies.

Marketing and sales strategies also influence your Sales System. These strategies define whom the company sells to, what the customer offering is, and how the selling is to be done. Sales and marketing teams are primarily accountable for these decisions, developing and continually fine-tuning them through market segmentation, product and service offerings and value propositions, sales process design, and go-to-market strategy development.

There’s an additional force originating within the company that affects the Sales System: the effectiveness hunt. The best sales organizations use it for constant performance improvement. Many familiar performance challenges—high turnover of top salespeople, slow sales growth, the need to develop more new accounts, a sales force that is complacent—if left unaddressed, can escalate into bigger problems. In addition, opportunities to become more effective may arise—for example, newly discovered sources of customer value may be incorporated into the sales process, or sales leaders may learn that upgrading sales force quality has a substantial positive impact on performance. Companies that are always on the hunt for effectiveness will respond to these challenges and take advantage of these opportunities.

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