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    Going Through The Motions Or Doing The Work?

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    Every organization I work with has a “Buyer focused selling process.” Every organization has deal management, pipeline, and account management processes. Every organization has taken their people through the latest greatest sales training, spends thousands per person on tools. Every organization focuses on their ICP. Every manager says they coach their people.

    When I go through my checklist of the strategies, processes, tools, training, programs, systems that help drive sales effectiveness, virtually every organization checks all the boxes. They have the things that should support high levels of sales performance.

    What's missing?

    I begin to wonder, if they have all this stuff in place, why are they talking to me? If they are using these things that should help improve our effectiveness, why are they consistently failing to produce results?

    As I drill down in my questions, I soon discover that while they have the things that support driving higher levels of performance, they aren’t using them–at least effectively.

    They aren’t using the processes or tools. Managers aren’t coaching and reinforcing the training, The programs and things they put in place to support top performance aren’t being used–at least their usage is inconsistent.

    If we don’t do the work required in implementing any of these things, we have no chance of seeing results or improvement. It’s the hard work that produces results we expect from these things we’ve invested in.

    The best programs, tools, training, processes in the world do nothing until we incorporate them into our day to day execution.

    Managers are critical in making these things happen, leveraging them to produce results.

    Sometimes managers say, “Use these things!!” They set the expectation, “We put this training and process in place, we expect you to be using them….”

    Inevitably, this fails, managers need to set the example. They have to use the tools, processes themselves. They need to reinforce the training and programs they put in place. Until managers make the use of these things part of their daily practice, it is unrealistic to expect their people to be using them.

    Want to drive CRM utilization, every deal review look at the opportunity tab in CRM. As you agree to next steps, have them documented as tasks in the system.

    Want to make sure your sales process is being used? As you discuss opportunities, use the sales process to guide the discussion. Reinforce the training by leveraging the principles in your discussions with sales people.

    It’s hard work, we actually have to do the things required when we implement them. But if we don’t do them, we won’t get the outcomes we expect.

    Sales effectiveness is all about doing the hard work to drive performance. Going through the motions, checking the boxes, produces nothing.

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    Article originally published on Apr 5, 2021 on the Partners in Excellence blog
    Dave Brock
    Published April 11, 2021
    By Dave Brock

    Dave has spent his career developing high performance organizations. He worked in sales, marketing, and executive management capacities with IBM, Tektronix and Keithley Instruments. His consulting clients include companies in the semiconductor, aerospace, electronics, consumer products, computer, telecommunications, retailing, internet, software, professional and financial services industries.

    Find out more about Dave Brock on LinkedIn