Are you ready to fall in love with process?

At Membrain, our goal is to develop specialized tools for the modern salesforce. We want to provide a software platform that makes it easy for companies to execute their sales strategy and consistently hit their targets.

In order to achieve this, we constantly review the latest research around proven success factors in B2B sales. We partner with prominent sales consulting firms. We engage in ongoing conversations with global thought leaders like Jonathan Farrington, Bob Apollo and Dave Kurlan to continuously learn about what works and what does not.

Suffice to say, we are sales enablement nerds. We get excited about things like playbooks, methodology, decision making teams and prospect qualification criteria. Yes, truly. If you mentioned “marketing automation” or “sales process” to us at a party…fine, conference, we would have 57 things to say on the subject. Once we got to our third sentence on the importance of sequencing stages, you would likely need to utilize the “Excuse me, I think I see someone I know…” escape move.

However, here’s the thing – while we get oddly excited about the latest trends, the research keeps coming back to one thing. Namely, that consistent performance is all about mastering the fundamentals.

Golfers don’t take their games to the next level through buying new clubs – I know, hard to take in – they get there by working on their swing, day in and day out. Our new year’s resolutions about finally getting into shape don’t materialize because we bought a gym card; it comes from actually showing up and getting our workouts in on a regular basis.

Sales transformations sound grand, but the outcomes hinge on our ability to develop a new set of behaviors, established through a process that allows us to change our habits over time. In short, long term success comes from falling in love with the process.

In complex B2B sales, top performing organizations focus on their sales infrastructure. They train their sales people and reinforce new behaviors; they develop a sales process and make sure it is executed in the field; they rigorously qualify their prospects; they automate micro-management, coach their sales people and measure the things that matter.

They may very well adopt a social selling strategy, playbooks, gamification and other sales enablement tools to increase sales effectiveness, but none of it would work if the foundation was absent.

From knowledge to execution

In a world filled with incredibly smart technology, a common mistake is to rely on tools as a quick fix to bigger problems. Instead of working at the fundamentals and define the best workflows for our sales organization, we look to technology for shortcuts.

To give you some context: we often talk to sales organizations that have successfully identified the gap between where they are and where they want to go. They are looking for ways to improve how they prospect and qualify leads, drive pipeline accountability, coach their sales people and use analytics to make well-informed, data-driven decisions. They get very excited when seeing what Membrain (or, for that matter, other sales enablement tools) can do to help them reach their goals.

Now, if you looking for a standard solution to a fairly straightforward problem, then yes: a system will help you save an extraordinary amount of time. If your data is all over the place, software can help you keep track of your contacts, accounts and activities. However, if you are looking to implement a strategy that requires a change in behaviors, it is not as straightforward. Technology is meant to support and execute change management initiatives.

Let’s revisit sales process, which came up as a topic of conversation during the hypothetical party/conference hosted in the third paragraph of this article. In Membrain, the sales process is a critical component for managing the pipeline and individual opportunities; however, the platform will not create a best practice process out of thin air. It is meant to bridge the gap between theory and practice in order to move from strategy to execution. It makes sure sales people adhere to, and execute, the process in the field. While smart software and analytics can help you make better decisions and improve performance over time, the infrastructure needs to be in place first.

Start with the fundamentals

We see this time and time again – companies are advised to invest in content marketing, social selling initiatives and gamification strategies – all of which can add tremendous value. However, in order for any change management initiative to be successful, there first needs to be a strategy. Technology and tools are there to facilitate the process of executing said strategy, whether it’s about implementing a sales process, a marketing automation program or an effective social selling strategy.

If you are looking for consistent performance and long term success, start by looking at the proven success factors. Look at the fundamentals; learn to fall in love with the process, the repetition of consistently doing the small things right. Identify your target customers and make sure you establish a process that allows you to disqualify wrong prospects early. Document and design a sales process that is easy to learn, execute and replicate. Identify what each rep needs in order to execute at every step. Set aside time to coach your salesforce on a regular basis and identify the metrics you need to track in order to do so effectively. Look at the data in order to understand where you should focus your time, money and resources in order to consistently hit your targets.

Once you have identified the best practices for your organization, then – and only then – should you start looking at tools and platforms that will help you reinforce the right behaviors in order to execute your sales strategy.