The Case for Changing Your Sales Process
If you're visiting our website, you're probably concerned that you're not getting the financial results you want from your sales efforts. Very few sales organizations are, unless they've worked with us for at least a year or longer. (See Why Engage Us?)
On average, our clients increase their net income per FTE at a rate three times faster than the industry norm. If you're not growing your net income at this rate, you're falling behind your peers and putting your brand at risk.
Most of our clients contacted us originally to address one or more of the issues below which to them represented a burning platform of lost opportunity and poor financials. Even companies who have experienced strong growth and earnings frequently find that their recent success has masked a wide variety of gaps in their sales process that may severely slow their growth and earnings in the coming months.
How about your company? Are you experiencing any of these gaps in sales performance?
Check those issues that cause you to worry.
| Employee sales behavior is below standard. | |
| Top line growth in sales revenue has been slow. | |
| The profit contribution from new sales is low. | |
| The mix of products sold is a drag on profitability. | |
| Turnover among sales staff is high. | |
| You're overpaying employees with your sales incentives. | |
| You're losing high value customers. | |
| A small number of sales personnel are producing most of your new sales revenue putting you at risk if they leave. | |
| You have to make undesirable price concessions to attract new business. | |
| Your sales cycle for business development is way too long. | |
| You don't have a well defined sales process so it takes new sales personnel too long to meet your minimum standards for sales production. | |
| Your sales training dollars have been a wasted investment because of poor sales supervision or lack of follow-up and accountability. | |
| You're not able to recruit salespeople who can sell. | |
| You have a low closing rate on sales leads generated by marketing and on business to business prospects in your sales pipeline. | |
| You don't have a well integrated sales effort across business lines. | |
| You're experiencing a low ratio of up-sells to new customers. | |
| You're experiencing a large number of customer complaints. | |
| Sales production isn't consistent from month to month. |
The real cost of hiring and training a salesperson who later can't meet even your minimum standards for sales production isn't his salary and training expense; it's the huge loss you experience in sales opportunity cost. Multiply this cost by the number of employees who aren't producing sales at your level of expectation and you get a feel for the amount of net income you're losing.
For some organizations who generate sales at the lowest margins of profitability, creating the ability to sell is their one last hope for survival.
For more insight into your current sales environment, complete the simple quizzes in the Activities section.
