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Best Practices for Sales Processes By Andrew Rudin, CEO, Outside Technologies, Inc. Why should you think about Best Practices? A better question is “Can you afford not to?”

The first time I heard the term “managing by magazine,” I laughed, because it seemed both funny and true at the same time.  Many executives read the latest management hype, and rush full-tilt to bring the mantra to their own operations—at least for a few weeks.  The adoption of these ideas—along with their associated benefits—don’t have to be  ephemeral.  Many ideas can yield long-lasting, strategic advantages if embedded in the organization’s core business processes.  This article gleans some of those ideas, combines others from tried-and-true experience, and distills them into a list of Best Practices for selling.

• A 5% increase in selling time can yield a 20% increase in revenue
• A 1% increase in pipeline value can yield a 25% increase in revenue
• A 15% decrease in the length of the sales cycle can yield a 30% increase in revenue

Even if your results are half what is touted, what could you achieve if you plugged in your own revenue objectives and bonus incentives?  For many people, the outcomes translate to significant organizational and personal financial rewards.  Whether you are building a new sales infrastructure for a start-up organization, or fixing a problem, implementing best practices will help your organization win in your competitive sandbox. 

But before jumping into “The List,” it is important to understand that without integrating sales processes, achievement of Best Practices is—just that.  It is not a strategy.  According to Michael Porter in his 1996 article What is Strategy? “operational effectiveness means performing similar activities better than rivals perform them.  In contrast, strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals’ or performing similar activities in different ways.”  Some managers dive into operational effectiveness because it’s tangible, but they fail to connect the processes they are managing to each other.What makes Best Practices strategic is creating fit between activities.  According to Porter, “if there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability.”   So, before adopting any improvements to your sales execution, consider your strategic goals, and how integrating processes may enable you to achieve them.

When you examine companies that have been successful generating sustained revenue that meets or exceeds plans, you will find those companies consistently perform the following:

#1 Establish effective sales leadership

• Clearly and frequently communicate the vision and goals of the company
• Enable the sales team to buy into the vision, and set goals for achieving that vision
• Set a strong positive example
• Have a strong mutual interest in the success of the organization and the individuals that work for it
• Make it possible for every team member to personally win
• Foster an environment for ongoing learning, including mentoring and coaching
• Foster a culture that accepts intelligent risk-taking, and recognize that both success and failure are normal and expected outcomes for taking risks

#2 Synchronize sales goals with organizational goals

• Every sales objective must relate to a corporate objective
• Establish compensation that motivates behavior toward the right outcomes for the enterprise.  If any of your core business goals are not backed up by a tangible monetary reward, achieving those goals are at greater risk.

• Define information to capture, such as competitive intelligence, product knowledge, industry experience
• Obtain input from many stakeholders (customers, salespeople, individuals internal and external to organization)
• Assign a person to manage the knowledge capture and distribution

#4 Establish defined that create value for the firm and for its clients 

• Know what processes are required for sales to be achieved in your organization.  Document those steps so they can be repeated and scaled
• Create a process “owner” within your organization for each step
• Establish use cases that includes inputs and outputs for those processes
• Monitor and review to make sure no processes are maintained if they are not creating value

#5 Segnent the prospect universe into industry targets

• Build pro-forma scenarios to develop specific paths for value creation and to avoid selling by “one-size-fits-all” features
• Develop clear, unambiguous sales messages to include in phone calls, direct mail, and email specific to those industry targets.

#6 Use a rigorious prospect qualification process to sub-segment the sales leads

• Grade the prospect’s quality according to a schema that is meaningful and unambiguous to all stakeholders within the organization
• Include criteria for determining the lifetime value of the prospect
• Include additional criteria for whether the prospect represents strategic value as a customer, and monetize that value
• Integrate the most highly qualified leads into the sales forecast
• Develop sales processes for each strata that aligns resources appropriate for the quality of the lead

#7 Integrate processes with dependent workflows

• Simple consistency between activities is a baseline requirement (for example, both marketing and sales must use the same nomenclature and criteria for prospect qualification)
• Focus on cycle-time reduction and elimination of non-value added work

#8 Use a CRM system 

• Enforce established workflows and consistency for initiating contact records, managing the information associated with them, and the activities connected with each.
• Enable multiple user views
• Maintain a process and standards for high data integrity (correct spelling of names, tracking of phone numbers, email addresses, etc.)

#9 Use performance measurements, metrics, and feedback loops 

• Make performance measurement consistent with compensation goals
• Establish standards for calculation and communicate those standards
• Make measurements tied to compensation transparent and auditable
• Compare actual to planned results
• Obtain feedback from target market messaging:  what communications are working well?  What communications need to be changed?
• Document findings from customer product demonstrations, customer requests, etc. and integrate with the product development process for evaluation and prioritization
• Conduct customer retention surveys with installed accounts
• Utilize regular, ongoing sales skills improvement programs

• Brainstorm for what can go wrong during each step, and assign probabilities for each situation
• Develop risk mitigation steps with a focus on managing the greatest probability for risk with the least cost
• Ask:  What assumptions are implicit in our system? And, what kinds of actions or conditions can render our assumptions false?

#11 Perform regular retrospectives or "After Hours Reviews" 

• Example structure: What was the intent? What happened? What was learned? What do we do now? Who else should we tell?

• Conduct reviews for opportunities won as well as lost
• Conduct on the campaign level to track efficacy and cost management

• Establish protocol around how reference accounts will be deployed in the sales process
• Make reference account activity an integral part of the sales process for specific lead groups
• Ensure the reference account receives appropriate higher levels of support and/or recognition

• Use a 12-month planning horizon or longer
• Connect activities with each other.  For example, direct mail and email campaigns should be built around event marketing, trade shows, and other activities, assuming these activities are included in the marketing plan.
• Use 3rd party validation as part of the marketing communication program.
• Emphasize Experience, Credibility, and Expertise
• Develop regular press releases and trade journal articlices