Discipline, Opportunity Management & Value Propositions

Three critical To-Dos:

1) Dramatically increase accountability and discipline in your sales force.

Measure each of your sales reps in terms of how well and how often he or she executes each of your most critical sales activities.  (Start with at least 5 metrics and add more over time.)  Use these numbers to identify which sales activities truly are critical to producing sales and margin by mathematically correlating each activity to the results produced.  (See "=correl" in your Excel Help.)

Publicly post the performance numbers for each sales activity in terms of top third, middle third and bottom third.  (You don't necessarily need to include individual names; just post the numbers.  The reps will know where they fall on the bell curve and will respond accordingly!)

Most importantly, identify the best performing rep for each critical sales activity each month.  Have one of those top reps present and lead a 30-minute discussion of "how to" execute a critical activity at each monthly sales meeting.

2) Thoroughly and conscientiously implement and use a robust CRM system 

Until the "Opportunity Management" functions of your CRM system are regularly used by the entire sales team, the measurement and analysis described above is impossible.  If you haven't already, bite the bullet and spend the money!  (Go cheap on the software and/or implementation services and you'll regret it.)

3) Become a "Value Proposition Maniac"

Insist that a compelling value proposition is included in any proposal:

• To a customer among the top 25% of any sales rep's territory

• To a customer that is strategically important

• For a strategically important product or service

Price, availability, product features, service and reputation do not qualify as components of a compelling value proposition.  (They only qualify as components of a lazy value proposition that is essentially identical to that of every competitor out there.)  At a minimum, a compelling value proposition includes:

• A statement of how one or more customer business processes are improved

• Quantification (hopefully in $$$ terms) of the value of that business process improvement

Three tall orders.  Easy to say, hard to do.