Revenue Enhancement      back

PIP’s Sales Force Effectiveness

PIP has developed a structured set of tools and analyses that, combined with our implementation expertise, can help to rapidly and sustainably lift sales force performance. This involves three steps:

• The first step is a quick but thorough diagnostic, assessing gaps against PIP’s sales force effectiveness framework and establishing the goals of the improvement effort.
• The second step is to prioritise efforts and develop specific improvement initiatives, carefully trading off the expected value of each initiative against the investment (time, resources) required to achieve it.
• The third step is to build the performance wiring to support, drive and manage ongoing performance.

Key Elements of Sales Force Effectiveness

PIP thinks of sales force effectiveness as being driven by five interdependent elements:

All of these elements must be addressed together as gaps in one can significantly undermine overall effectiveness

The Diagnostic

The diagnostic phase aims to rapidly provide insight and direction across each element of sales force effectiveness.

Sales Strategy

• Maximising ‘economic rent’ for each customer, by optimising margin vs. standard cost
• Optimising pursuit costs by optimising sales costs vs. margin
• Minimising complexity in operations and/or successfully pricing it in where required by managing cost variance vs. margin.

Account Coverage

• Optimise the size, ‘type’ and deployment of the sales force
• Aligning channels with customer segments
• Empowerment through supporting tools and processes

Skills

• Ensuring account managers have the skills to deliver, including understanding what to sell to whom and why, key features of the value proposition, their own accountabilities, how to use tools and processes and specific selling skills.

Motivation

Performance Management

• Establish a system of regular, closed-loop reviews for coaching, clarifying priorities and confirming alignment with strategy.

The diagnostic heat map is a key deliverable from this phase.

Prioritise, Plan and Implement

The second step is to prioritise efforts and develop specific improvement initiatives, carefully trading off the expected value of each initiative against the investment (time, resources) required to achieve it. Prioritisation is crucial, ensuring finite resources are focused on the highest-value activities. Initiatives are assigned to owners and tracked using the Action Tracker and regular reviews. Consistent reporting for the project means the overall benefit can be tracked and reported and staff held accountable to deliver the results.

Build the Performance Wiring

The third step is to build the performance wiring to support, drive and manage ongoing performance. The sales tools and collateral, automatic reporting and regular reviews will at first be used to carefully track and manage the initial improvement effort and, once firmly embedded, ongoing performance improvements.

Back to top