Sales Laundry

A sales process is just like a manufacturing process. One creates a finished good and the other creates a good customer for life. A process must be owned partially by the people who work in it and the worker’s core strengths must be compatible with this process. The process can’t be controlled unless it is measured. The process will have variation and will require problem solving for special causes & common causes. The companies’ culture and driving values of integrity, continuous improvement, shared learning and innovation must also be understood & accepted by the workers. Just like the manufacturing process, if you don’t purchase the best raw materials or hire the right people for the process then you will have misalignments, variation & potential problems. Sales people always use the excuse that the process is too rigid and this causes lost sales. Many times it isn’t the process but the reward system which is not focused on the process or its improvement. This comes back to the sales person whose personality doesn’t fit the company’s values or processes. Just like a manufacturing process must make consistent quality products the sales & marketing process should be creating good customers and maintaining these good customers for life. Many times the root cause is the hiring process, training process and reward system.

Well thought out comment. Thank you for the input, Greg.

I will agree with you that the process of selecting and hiring a sales person may be lacking, but I still hold fast to the idea that a rigid process can be as much of a burden as a blessing for the sales team, especially where the “variation” you mentioned is lacking.

Example: X Technologies (names changed) runs an inside sales team making outbound calls. Each representative is required to make 85 outbound calls a day to keep a consistent flow of deals from pipeline to PO.

New guy Dave the sales rep, on the job six months, is on the verge of being fired for not meeting the daily requirement of 85 outbound sales calls.

To be fair, when Dave was hired, he agreed to make his 85 calls a day, and signed a document saying there was a “zero tolerance” policy for failing to meet the requirement.

What Dave and everyone else failed to realize was that Dave would be running 115% to quota each of the last four months after his sixty day ramp up but would be taking almost twice as much time on each call to close the deal. As a result he was only making an average of 47 calls per day and found himself 30 days from termination.

The thinking is backwards. The call quota was set to make sure that by following the process, each rep would have the greatest likelihood of success and the company would meet projections. Yet Dave is on the verge of being fired not for being a bad rep, in fact he is in the Top 15%, but for failing to follow a rule his success has precluded him from doing, designed to make sure he is successful.

To be fair, the balance between process and personality vary by industry, by product and even by where a product is in its lifecycle, but the pendulum can swing too far to process or too far to personality.

You are correct in stating that a sales process is likened to a manufacturing process, where the analogy diverges though is that the same 14 step process that ensures a perfect widget will be created every time, does not, in many forms of sales, ensure a perfect closed sale every time, because, unlike the factory worker making the widget, the holes on our prospective customers do not always need to be drilled in the same places by our salesman.

I would like to read your comments and if you would, delve more into how the reward system impacts this question. I would like to explore that thought a little more.

A sales process is just like a manufacturing process. One creates a finished good and the other creates a good customer for life. A process must be owned partially by the people who work in it and the worker’s core strengths must be compatible with this process. The process can’t be controlled unless it is measured. The process will have variation and will require problem solving for special causes & common causes. The companies’ culture and driving values of integrity, continuous improvement, shared learning and innovation must also be understood & accepted by the workers. Just like the manufacturing process, if you don’t purchase the best raw materials or hire the right people for the process then you will have misalignments, variation & potential problems. Sales people always use the excuse that the process is too rigid and this causes lost sales. Many times it isn’t the process but the reward system which is not focused on the process or its improvement. This comes back to the sales person whose personality doesn’t fit the company’s values or processes. Just like a manufacturing process must make consistent quality products the sales & marketing process should be creating good customers and maintaining these good customers for life. Many times the root cause is the hiring process, training process and reward system.

Well thought out comment. Thank you for the input, Greg.

I will agree with you that the process of selecting and hiring a sales person may be lacking, but I still hold fast to the idea that a rigid process can be as much of a burden as a blessing for the sales team, especially where the “variation” you mentioned is lacking.

Example: X Technologies (names changed) runs an inside sales team making outbound calls. Each representative is required to make 85 outbound calls a day to keep a consistent flow of deals from pipeline to PO.

New guy Dave the sales rep, on the job six months, is on the verge of being fired for not meeting the daily requirement of 85 outbound sales calls.

To be fair, when Dave was hired, he agreed to make his 85 calls a day, and signed a document saying there was a “zero tolerance” policy for failing to meet the requirement.

What Dave and everyone else failed to realize was that Dave would be running 115% to quota each of the last four months after his sixty day ramp up but would be taking almost twice as much time on each call to close the deal. As a result he was only making an average of 47 calls per day and found himself 30 days from termination.

The thinking is backwards. The call quota was set to make sure that by following the process, each rep would have the greatest likelihood of success and the company would meet projections. Yet Dave is on the verge of being fired not for being a bad rep, in fact he is in the Top 15%, but for failing to follow a rule his success has precluded him from doing, designed to make sure he is successful.

To be fair, the balance between process and personality vary by industry, by product and even by where a product is in its lifecycle, but the pendulum can swing too far to process or too far to personality.

You are correct in stating that a sales process is likened to a manufacturing process, where the analogy diverges though is that the same 14 step process that ensures a perfect widget will be created every time, does not, in many forms of sales, ensure a perfect closed sale every time, because, unlike the factory worker making the widget, the holes on our prospective customers do not always need to be drilled in the same places by our salesman.

I would like to read your comments and if you would, delve more into how the reward system impacts this question. I would like to explore that thought a little more.