Thursday, April 3, 2008

"Sales" - An art or a science?

Up until recently the sales department in many organizations was the last to systematize its business process. Now many organizations have a sales process; depending on the complexity of the sale the process could be three steps or ten, and each step is defined by the company culture but more importantly by the customers' buying process.

The measurement of these steps allows some degree of "science" to enter into the discussion. Measurement of the length of time each sales step takes, whether it is inside or outside of the established norm and tying the sales steps to the forecast confidence level are two criteria that we can measure. Once everyone is using the same terminology, forecasts become more accurate and managment knows when to jump in and coach.

An opportunity that is at the "discovery" stage should not have a 90% confidence factor placed on it. This early in the process the confidence would be closer to 10%.
A confidence level of 80% might be assigned to an opportunity that has gone through all of the qualification and approval stages and the customer is committed to go to production.

No more “Lone Ranger” sales people; now it is truly a global and collaborative sales effort requiring teamwork and communication between remote teams with individual goals and objectives. Gone are the days of the “gunslinger” sales rep, out there alone, making deals, writing up orders and doing it all solo using his unique selling style. There was a myth that sales did not need a process – “sales” according to common wisdom was “an art”. Sales organizations still have a long way to go bringing science into the art of sales.