Other Articles

B2B Manifesto

Transformation of the Sales Stud

The Black Hole

The Fast Eat the Slow

Managing by your Methodology

The Law of the Average

Integrating your Sales Methodology

Integrating your sales methodology into your sales organization

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At some point, someone in your company looked around and said "we need to provide some sales training to our sales force". Clearly, the motivation for providing sales training was to improve your sales team's performance. You paid your money and pulled your team out of the field for a couple of days to train them on one of the many sales methodologies. A few months later, you turned around and realized that you weren't seeing any significant improvement in sales results. 

Why? Usually it's because your salespeople aren't actually using any of the things they learned in the sales training. Why? This usually happens for one of the following reasons: 1) the salespeople can't remember much of what they learned in the training session (we'll cover that in another article). 2) sales managers aren't managing by and reinforcing the methodology 3) the sales methodology hasn't been integrated into your company's sales organization. 

Following is an exploration of several of the keys to integrating a sales methodology into a sales organization. 

Tailor the sales methodology to your specific selling environment
A company can't develop a high performance sales force using an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all sales methodology. The methodology has to be tailored to your specific selling environment for it to produce maximum results. A good sales methodology can be considered a 'map' to sales success. To draw a comparison, a generic map of the United States wouldn't help you find your way around the back streets of Sweetwater, Texas. The map (ie: methodology) has to be designed for your specific situation. A critical aspect of the "tailoring" process is aligning your sales methodology to your sales process. For example, you have to figure out how you are going to capture the information and complete the action items dictated by your sales methodology over the steps you've laid out in your sales process. 

Encapsulate the key aspects of the methodology with an opportunity management dashboard
As we mentioned above, most salespeople remember very few of the concepts they learn in training. One reason for this is that many of the training programs used by companies are merely a collection of sales tips and tactics rather than an integrated, systematic approach to managing sales opportunities. To consistently improve sales performance, your sales methodology should be encapsulated within a 'dashboard' that is used consistently by salespeople and sales management. If the methodology has be tailored to your company's specific selling environment and is captured in a useful format, your salespeople will find it valuable and use it. It's no secret that salespeople loath filling out forms. Therefore, building the dashboard into your CRM/SFA also increases the odds of your salespeople adopting it. 

Manage account reviews using the dashboard...religiously
You've probably heard the old adage that it takes 21 days (or more) to develop a new habit. Inevitably, salespeople will fall back to their old ways of doing things in the heat of battle. Therefore, it's up to sales management to continually bring them back to the methodology. A great methodology will help you identify areas of weakness more easily because you view every sales opportunity through the same lens. This gives you the opportunity to focus on improving those specific areas to ultimately produce a high performance sales team. (More details on this subject are available in another ThisQuarter article entitled "Managing by your Methodology") 

In summary, tailoring your sales methodology to your unique selling environment and integrating it into all aspects of your sales organization can significantly improve the results of your sales force..