Special Report: Increase Your Sales Revenue

The situations I have found have reinforced my experience that to out-perform the competition in a highly contested market the whole organisation must be sales enabled. At the Breakfast I outlined 5 Imperatives that must be implemented so that the organisation is a finely tuned sales machine. So that you can build them into your go to market for this financial year, here they are:

1. Translate the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy into SALES tools for everyoneOnly rarely do the staff in organisations know what the Vision is for their company. Often the Mission that they are expected to implement toward the Vision is not clear. The Values are not overtly stated relying on hearsay or an attitude of osmosis: ‘just work out for yourself the way we do things around here’. The usual practice is that the Strategy that the organisation is using to underpin the Mission is a tightly held secret by senior management for fear that it may ‘leak out’. The leaders of such companies are missing out on deploying a powerful sales tool. It is important for the staff to understand that the only reason a company exists is to provide a return to the owners. If the owners were not prepared to invest in satisfying a market need, there would not be a company and hence there would be no jobs. They should ensure that everyone in the organisation is fully aware of what the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy are and what their role is to ensure they are delivered. Staff that truly understand these don’t just ‘have a job’, they have a purpose to be there. On the one hand they will understand what the company does to provide a profitable output and on the other hand the value that it provides to the end customers so that they will pay the appropriate price. Let’s look at an example. If a person arrives every day to ‘fill boxes and send them out’ at a pharmaceutical company without any knowledge of where their function fits into the ‘big picture’ they may consider it a boring task. If they understand that the products they are packing and shipping are in line with the organisation’s Vision of “Providing a better life for the elderly in the community through abolishing their pain” they can now understand that their daily actions are crucial to helping elderly people who are suffering. They are no longer ‘packaging pills’; they are ‘shipping relief’. When a particular sales person at this company is working on closing more business with a wholesaler and needs to find out if a shipment has been sent or is being processed, the stores people will have a far more proactive approach to assisting when they know that by actively assisting the sales effort they are contributing to the company’s efforts to provide a highly valuable service to the end customer. The sales person is able to focus on making the next sale, not on doing battle internally with staff that think they are ‘an annoying sales person’ who is only worried about making a sale.

2. Embed SALES into the Culture across the organizationEvery function of the Sales Enabled Organisation adopts sales (note the small ‘s’) as part of its culture, or ‘the reason we do things around here’. Once everyone understands the purpose of the company by understanding the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy the leaders can work to ensure that sales is part of the Culture across the company. The Culture relies on what is held in high esteem in that organisation. It is defined by what the leaders pay attention to, what they reward and what they punish. To enable a Sales Culture, the staff must have a holistic view of the company, what it stands for, the value of its output to the customers and why the sales process is imperative for the company’s survival and hence their job security. The leaders share the sales approach with everyone and educate them on how every role fits into the overall approach to the customer and sales to them. They recognise, praise and reward efforts in all areas that contribute toward positive sales results. They actively assist functions that are having difficulties that negatively impact sales success. Where there is any negative attitude toward the sales effort or counter-productive behaviour, they are quick to act and address the situation decisively. In this environment, the Culture becomes “What can I do to assist sales” as opposed to “Don’t bother me, I’m not in sales”.

3. Define the Sales Value Process and ensure SALES is built into EVERY process. In some way or another, every part of an organisation has a part to play in creating and retaining customers. It is obvious that Sales and Marketing are key to creating sales with customers but other functions may find it difficult to understand their part in the sales process. Every organisation has a ‘Sales Value Process’ that can be defined from the time the customer first ‘touches’ the organisation until their transaction is completed and then progresses on to developing repeat business. As businesses develop, ‘silos’ begin to emerge that become self fulfilling, taking internal inputs and passing their output to another internal function. The people within the ‘silo’ become focused on day to day operations and lose sight of their contribution to the end customer and the sales effort. It is necessary for the leaders and management of the organisations to:
continually reinforce the functions’ respective part in the sales process actively engage with the staff to ensure they are aware of what the Sales Value Process is continually inform the people how their individual and collective activities contribute to successfully selling the company’s products and services.

4. Train every Customer Contact Person on SALES as it applies to themThere are a multitude of Customer Contact People in organisations. They will range from the person that takes the customer enquiry all the way through to the delivery person. People in accounts receivable, accounts payable, receptionists, repair and installation personnel, retail sales assistants, senior managers etc, etc are all Customer Contact People. Every person that has any contact with an end customer, no matter what their role is in the customer organisation, should have at least a basic level of training in sales as it applies to their role. Whilst they may not initiate or close sales, they represent the company every time they are in contact with the customer and should therefore regard themselves as ‘in sales’. Having a background understanding of sales as it applies to their role can mean
they identify opportunities that would otherwise have been missed, they are able to assist customers without passing them off to someone else and hence reinforce their relationship with the company or they are able to handle difficult situations and properly brief the appropriate person to deal with the customer in a timely manner.

5. Execute a SEnO program and continually improve the Sales Value ProcessFor the organisation to remain at the peak of its sales performance, it is imperative to implement and continually apply a SEnO program. This program analyses the organisation from a sales perspective in much the same way as a company examines its quality or occupational health and safety. It should be owned by the Senior Management Team and actively driven by the CEO. The SEnO program assesses how ‘sales enabled’ it is across the organisation. It identifies the organisation’s Sales Value Process and looks at how it compares to best practice in line with the various areas detailed above. It highlights areas for improvement and recommends actions that can be taken that will provide significant sales revenue improvement. An ongoing review process is defined to ensure actions are completed and that the sales value process is continually improved. Ultimately the SEnO program is an integral part of the governance of the company with reporting on initiatives, outcomes and any actions that must be taken.