The Sales Process

Is yours optimized?

What if you could:

Gain more positive control of your selling effort
Sell more efficiently.total time, time to close
Reduce your overall cost of closing
Focus your total resources for selling on getting results
Improve your success ratio
Have more confidence in your sales forecasts
Be better and more efficiently informed about your key
programs
Have meaningful feedback and real time control of your selling
effort
Be in a strong position to drive real improvement rather than
simply working harder

There is a way forward to a

more productive Selling Effort:
The Opportunity for dramatic
improvement lies in a single
powerful realization:

Selling is simply a
Process :
A PROCESS like any other in
your business

Selling is a process!
Many of the tools, attitudes, programs
and methods used to manage the
factory can be adapted to administer
the selling process.

Create a New Way of Thinking:

Believe it! Selling is a process like any other
Your sales process can be mapped and

documented as a series of steps/operations.

Then steps can be optimized
Like any other process, selling can be
measured and controlled for results
Any sales process can be continuously
improved and the results tracked through
measurement

Sales SuccessGetting a Good Start:

You can design the best sales process ever but if

it is aimed the wrong way all you will do is a

perfect job of executing failure. T. Brown

Successful sales plans flow from well developed

and fully supported strategic planning which
incorporates accurate, detailed market data and
realistic business self assessment:

You need facts, best thinking, tough minded

realism and vision linked to measurable action.
T. Brown

Successful Selling Starts with well

executed Strategic Planning:
Understand/Define what you want
Define your market and your place in it
Remember that Realism and Accuracy determine quality
Always get the Outside View- avoid your bias
Then plan well-

Facts, thought, realism, and vision linked to measurable

actions for all responsible players.

Strategic Planning:

Where will we be active?

-Which Products
-Which Geographic Areas
-Which Core Technologies
-Which Value Creation Stages
-Which Markets

One Action Oriented Model

Arenas
What will be our speed and
sequence of moves?
-Speed of expansion/growth
-Sequence of initiatives

Staging

Economic Vehicles
Logic

How will we get there?

-Internal development
-Joint Ventures
-Licensing
-Acquisitions

Differentiation

How will we win?

-Image
-Customization
-Price
-Styling (Design)
-Reliability

How will we obtain our returns?

-Lowest costs due to scale advantage
-lowest costs through scope and replication advantages
-Premium prices due to unmatchable service
-Premium prices due to proprietary product features

D.C. Hambrick and J.W. Fredrickson,

"Are You Sure You Have a Strategy?
Academy of Management Executive, November 2001.

Sales PlanningReduce your Global Strategic View to

Specific Assigned Actions by sorting
downwards:
Start with the big Picture
Market Map

Strategic Overlay

Target Market

Run it through your Play Book

Look at your total slice

Target Accounts

Decide what you can handle

High Priority Accounts

Detailed Account Action Plans
(Sales, Operations ,Development, Management)

Identify the best pieces

Define action

New /Target Customer Selection-

Pick the right targets and get results by

starting from your strategic plan:
Strategic Fit?

Product Fit

Competition
Resources Required
Profit Potential
Overall Risk

Sales Planning and Performance

Toolkit

Some Tools and Techniques:

Overall Sales Process Improvement
Maximizing Customer Exposure
Focusing Resources for Results
Controlling for Results
Managing the Customer Base

Sales is a processImprove it!

Map your existing sales process

Discover your best practices-what works?
Eliminate non value added activity
Optimize your process for results
Identify and institute meaningful controls
Create measurements to provide control

feedback
Continue and Repeat!

Time on Target Planning-

Maximize your customer exposure:

Pick the right sales targets
Avoid selling distractionsdo what wins
Understand and then optimize your

selling time usage

Narrowly focus available time on
objectives
Eliminate non value added activities

Manage what you decide to doLower your noise level and improve
results:
Recognize that resources are limited
Realize that absent setting priority all

customer demands have equal weight

Seize the power of saying no and use it as
leverage to gain customer commitment
Demand that everyone think like a business
person.
Keep you focus on the overall goal

Sales Project Management:

Sales is a process like any other

Structure your overall sales project approach- tollgate

system?
Assign a Leader/Process Owner for each project
Establish inescapable clear ownership for results.
Accept that Sales Success is a shared outcome
Identify the individual tasks- assign and scheduleinterlock objectives
Regularly Measure Project Progress against goals
Correct, Adjust and Act!

Manage your existing Customer BaseAnalyze and Classify your Customers:

Strategic Fit
Size
Future Potential
Total Resource Required per Profit $
Overall Profitability

Only the future has value..being in love

with history will hold you back.

Manage your Customer BaseAct!:

Act on what you learnnow!
Manage account time according to overall

potential
Eliminate effort on non productive
accounts..stop and drop.
Adjust non profitable accounts
Stop other effort where it doesnt advance
the sale
Adjust your sales method to the situation

There are hundreds of

other ways forward to Sales
Improvement if you remember:

Selling is simply a Process :

A PROCESS like any other in your business- Understand, Measure, Control, Improve
and

Succeed $$.

The Sales Process

Is yours optimized?
About the Author:
Tim Brown is the Managing Partner of Brevis Consulting; a firm that helps
mid-sized companies improve their results. In his thirty years of senior level
management experience he has led organizations in North America, Asia and
Europe as General Manager, Senior VP of Marketing and Sales, National
Marketing Manager, Business Unit Manager and Product Manager in several
successful global mid-sized businesses. He can be reached by calling +1 (508)
758-2441 or sending e-mail to tbrown@brevisconsult.com .
2006 BREVIS Consulting

www.brevisconsult.com