ISM Book Review - Sales Transformation

Changing a salesforce to be more effective is a hard task. Salespeople are tougher to convince and motivate than those in other departments, where in any case change can be nonnegotiable (such complying with regulation, although this can apply to sales too). A continual process of at least tweaking and at times fundamental transformation may be needed to keep up with the pace of change in the market. The first book we look at addresses the change and transformation challenges; the second looks at a critical part of the transformation agenda, namely sales development and how to orient the salesforce to build a better pipeline through the inbound/ outbound mix in a world where inside sales is becoming increasingly important.

7 STEPS TO SALES FORCE TRANSFORMATION This book takes the tried and tested method of presenting a number of steps, and seven doesn’t sound too scary for such a big task. It’s written by two people at Symmetrics Group, a US sales consultancy – the lead author is Warren Shiver and the firm’s founder. They kick off by addressing the challenges and defining sales transformation: “A holistic and multidimensional programme, one that touches on every part of the organisation, not just sales, and that fundamentally changes the way a salesforce sells.” It’s not about changing a lightbulb but rewiring the house and it’s hard – they note a McKinsey study that found that 75% of companies that attempted to transform to a solutions selling approach failed to

SEVEN STEPS TO SALES HEAVEN

Drivers: The forces, events, and circumstances that can compel the need for a sales transformation. Vision: A definition of the desired future tailored to the needs and specific goals of the organisation. Case: A description of what’s required to build a case for change. Support: Sales transformations require support from other areas such as marketing, and from partners and customers. Roadmap: strategy and structure, processes and tools, enablement and people, and metrics and management. Implement: How to launch your initiative – whether to roll it out as a comprehensive programme or as a pilot. Sustain: How to make the change “stick” through leadership, sales team training, communications, management tools, hiring etc. produce a return on investment. The challenges are about “will” (the mindset of salespeople), their skills and also how the rest of the company works to help or hinder the sales transformation.

But the first question is whether a transformation is needed or just some tweaks, which could be addressed by decent sales training, but if you want to switch to the kind of change promoted in The Challenger Sale, the authors say transformation will probably be needed, as consistently delivering insights “requires new value propositions, case studies and collateral from the marketing department, new competencies, skill development, recruiting profiles from HR, and alignment with operations to refine products and services”. And the way to do it is through a “top-down, systematic approach”, which is their seven steps that answer the what, why, who and how questions of the process.

The authors talk about “levers” to pull that will

effect change and are especially effective with sales teams. These include gaining a perspective from both your clients and from inside your firm, say by setting up a customer advisory board (the outside view) and a sales advisory board (from the inside). Aligning the organisation, not just the sales team, is key, as is leadership, defining the process and only then putting the people with the right skills in place, and identifying metrics you can measure and show to your “C suite”.

Having set the scene only now does the book address the seven steps promised in the title (see also box, previous page). There has to be a driver, or drivers, behind a transformation, and in half of firms this is setting new revenue growth targets, they say. Then, crucially, a vision has to be created for the transformation that is urgent – more like the building is on fire rather than just a recognition of sluggish sales. This is key – failure to set a compelling vision for the whole firm and for the salesforce is common, and there is much detail here on customer segmentation, and on selling and go to market models.

Moving on, the authors say you need to treat a sales transformation like an internal sale, as sustainable change is the greatest challenge.“Our experience has taught us that you should handle a sales transformation effort just as you would a hard-fought, drawn-out sales campaign, but in this case, the campaign is focused internally,” they say. There’s a good chapter on how to do this.

Next comes developing a roadmap – and a health warning: “Make no mistake about it: the gritty, unglamorous work of charting your organisation and drafting a thorough roadmap is where many sales leaders and sales transformations fail.” This chapter takes a workbook approach to producing a roadmap that allows you to identify in as much detail as possible the gaps between your current state and your vision in terms of four main areas of sales capability and effectiveness: sales strategy and structure, processes and tools, enablement and people, and metrics and management. “We call these four areas the way of sales,” say the authors.

The last two steps are implementation and sustaining the transformation. Implementation takes three chapters, spanning issues such as getting the right leaders in place and deploying the right processes and tools, addressing barriers (one can actually be success that is good but not great), and extending the transformation to partners and customers. Finally, to sustain the change you’ll need to build a culture around standard processes, accountability, and performance management or risk going back to square one.

The book is from the US, but is one of the most straightforward such books we’ve seen, and has plenty of examples and references. But we agree – it’s far from simple to do a transformation... MOVE OVER BANT – HERE’S PACT

Pain: Not every company has a need for your product or service And some that do refuse to admit it. If it doesn’t agree you solve a pressing issue, you’re dead in the water. Pain matters. Authority: You likely have multiple decision makers; reps need to understand the role that each plays. Consequence: Prospects’ biggest issue is fear that the cure will hurt worse than the illness. You need to dig for implications of not acting. Target profile: This is about confirming fit and identifying red flags. Are there technical, cultural, or internal political issues that will kill the deal?

“A vision has to be created that is urgent – more like the building is on fire rather than just a recognition of sluggish sales” – 7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation

7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation: Driving sustainable change in your organization, by Warren Shiver and Michael Perla, is published by Palgrave Macmillan and should be on Amazon UK soon

The Sales Development Playbook: build repeatable pipeline and accelerate growth with inside sales, by Trish Bertuzzi, is out now on Amazon UK THE SALES DEVELOPMENT PLAYBOOK This book sounds like it has a broad remit but homes in on the sales front-end and generating pipeline. It’s a labour of love by Trish Bertuzzi, CEO of The Bridge Group, a US specialist in B2B inside sales, who says that sales development is the best response to addressing the challenges of reaching prospects who are bombarded with material, and who also now work in diverse buying units. Like most books of this type, it’s built around a structure – in this case strategy (aligning with your market), specialisation (prospect segmentation and specialist selling roles), recruiting, retention, execution and leadership.

Bertuzzi introduces her own “five whys” framework for what buyers ask themselves – why listen, care, change, you (ie. the seller) and now? She relates this to getting introductory meetings or qualified opportunities, showing clearly how this should play out with mature and immature markets and how the wrong approach can seriously upset account executives if sales development reps get it wrong. She also says it is time to move on from BANT (budget, authority, need and timing) as it pushes prospects too soon. Instead she puts forward PACT – pain, authority, consequence and target profile (see box). You can add timing in mature markets to prevent your reps from handing over opportunities who are qualified but unable to buy for three or four quarters. This shows the thoroughness of the book.

On specialisation, Bertuzzi looks at the inbound/outbound debate, and whether one rep can do both. Then she moves on to how to spot the qualities of people you recruit (and how to pay them), and how to retain them using coaching, for one. Execution is all about “dramatically” improving the onboarding process, the impact of “cadence” and media in outreach, and using voicemail and email that gets results.

This is an excellent book that abounds with practical and tried and tested methods for developing pipeline, and is firmly focused on people rather than dry theory.