A driving force...sales force in companies exists primarily to drive revenue and business growth.
A sales force exists primarily to drive revenue and business growth. It is the supporting pillar of any commercial organisation to pursue commercial benefits for its shareholders or benefactors.
In order to be successful, each of these commercial organisations has its own form of sales methods and procedures. Since such organisations are commercially motivated, the commercial roles and responsibilities of its sales force must encapsulate a business-friendly mentality, dynamic structure and be results-driven across all units to enable effective selling which in turn, would drive revenue and business growth.
An effective sales force requires a systematic sales methodology to drive sales and increase the productivity of the sales team. Training conducted with effective content and accurate analytics will help provide the foundation for a productive sales team that is both dynamic and results-driven. This will require the management’s involvement in order to ensure a focused sales management structure is put in place which would form the key building blocks for an effective sales force.
Understand The Way 0f The Land
This may sound easy but it is very difficult to achieve. Firstly, we need to ensure the sales force understands the local market. To do so, they would have to look into customer behaviour, buying patterns and their respective needs.
Some commercial organisations may have a specialised market analyst or a designated team to research, investigate and collate various forms of information accordingly. However, this comes at a high cost and to recruit such specialists would be difficult. An effective sales force needs to have the right skills and knowledge to fully understand their customers. This is even more vital in Asia as its diverse market comprises different countries with various cultures and demographics. A hurdle here would be establishing a consistent and focused sales force, leading to a more challenging sales training programme.
Additionally, the sales force will also require such customer related information in a timely manner, which is relevant to their sales engagement. In short, an effective sales force need to understand “what, why and when their customer purchases”.
While historical information may provide a retrospect, it lacks the ability to provide confirmation or assurance of future customer behaviour, needs, or usage pattern. Although there are sales training programmes that may attempt to assist or help improve the probability of such a sales force, most successful sales individuals identify this as being more of an art that comes with experience and polishes their ability to identify the “what, why and when”.
Sales Methodology
When it comes to sales methodologies or procures, it is important that they be easily accessible, understood and executed by the respective sales offices in order to be utilised effectively. Besides being user-friendly, these methodologies must be presented in an intuitive manner which allows for a suitable sales engagement conversation to be a guideline for the sales force to use when dealing with potential customers.
One of the other perks of a sales methodology is that it may be used to demonstrate and reinforce the professionalism and good practices of the sales force towards their customers, thus providing a sense of assurance to their credibility.
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Best of both worlds...Web seminars are a time efficient and cost effective training approach.
Sales Training Programme
A sales training programme needs to be consistent and structured as a key building block to help reinforce the organisation’s sales strategy and methodology. Therefore, regardless of whether it’s new sales hires or existing sales resources, the programme needs to cater to both sales group to improve and reinforce their sale effectiveness throughout their sales career within the organisation.
The training programme should be constructed in various formats, namely:
Class Room: This is particularly important for new hires, change of roles or launch of new products. Although this is an effective training method, it’s also one of the most costly, especially for a large sales team spread across multiple countries in Asia.
Web Seminar: A time efficient and cost effective training approach, web seminars are often more suitable for a specific topic, reinforcement of key topics or simply to act as a general refresher to ensure a focused sales mindset. Web seminars have proven to be more effective as they are able to provide more interactive training tools and offer fewer time constraints for the sales team. This comes as it allows them to utilise the web seminar based on their sales schedule.
Information Sheet: A physical or electronic information sheet is another alternative to ensure a sales team is kept abreast of the latest and accurate information in enabling sales to be conducted effectively. Sometimes, this could be structured as customer-friendly material such as information pertaining to a particular product or feature.
Templates: It is important to provide the sales team with suitable templates as part of their sales engagement activities. This will help improve sales effectiveness in order to guide their sales conversation, providing relevant customer information and avoid time wastage in duplicating sales engagement material. Such sales templates may include presentations, proposals, sales cycle qualification steps, and product information materials.
Strategic Thinking
Since the primary objective of sales is to drive revenue, therefore any effective sales force must be strategically deployed. That is, they must be able to engage their customer strategically. This will allow them to understand the “what, why and when” in a manner that is critical to the customer and their organisation as a whole.
Effective strategic thinking must include the mastery of customer-related skill sets such as marketing, customer service and business development. With such skills in their arsenal, this would allow them to demonstrate their ability to drive revenue and become a critical part of the sales force. This is very much welcomed by customers as well as their organisations.
Marketing And Sales Alignment
Since customers perception of any organisation is driven by the marketing initiatives, therefore both marketing and sales are highly dependent on each other for success.
Marketing campaigns must be aligned with the sales strategy and vice versa. And any sales enablement initiatives need to be consistent in order to drive the same business outcome collectively. One easy approach to achieve this is to ensure both marketing and sales are represented at the point where any marketing or sales strategies and initiatives are put together.
In summary, an effective sales force is critical to the commercial success of any organisation, as it creates the foundation that enables businesses in driving revenue. Furthermore, any effective sales force in Asia must be customised locally because the Asia region, unlike others, is a collection of multiple countries. A localised sales force will be aligned with their Asian customer’s behaviour, needs and buying pattern. This will significantly improve their sales effectiveness and commercial success in driving business growth.
CK Mah is a business excellence driver across a wide IT services spectrum with sound profit margins in a multicultural environment within Asia Pacific region. He is currently employed as a Regional Director for Gartner.