User:Girlacres/Sales

Sales transformation is a change management discipline that enables company executives to improve sales performance by aligning resources that relate to sales, management, marketing, and customer service, or improving sales talent and sales operations.

The goals of a sales transformation initiative are typically to help the board drive the company toward its revenue goals, to improve customer intimacy, to allow the head of sales to hit their revenue targets, and to empower salespeople to earn more money.

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Sales transformation is a change management discipline that enables company executives to improve sales performance[1] by aligning resources that relate to sales, management, marketing, and customer service, or improving sales talent and sales operations.

Sales transformation is the alignment of every sales channel with strategies for driving growth. We like to call those strategies for driving growth the "big ideas." Organizations typically come up with significant shifts in focus that can create big growth but also require a big change in sales focus, in sales behavior, and in sales skill.

Another common sales transformation is a shift from selling individual products to selling an integrated solution, where different offerings and services come together to solve a broader set of customer business problems. In most cases, this kind of transformation will involve learning completely new sales behaviors in terms of what reps are selling and to who reps are selling. This change requires a new set of knowledge around the customer's world and the organization's capabilities as well as new skills to have a very different sales conversation with broader sets of customer stakeholders.

Yet, according to the Harvard Business Review, as many as 70 percent of all change initiatives fail, which is why organisations need to think carefully about the transformation they are attempting, and to set clear objectives. In many cases, a key objective is to focus on and improve digital sales.

More and more, the solutions that businesses provide can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, via the cloud. This has fundamentally shifted the way customers do business and, as a consequence, many sales departments are understanding the necessity of changing their sales operations, focusing less on field sales and more on digital.

This new reality has, of course, meant that organisations have had to invest in employee development services, like training and coaching, in order to bring their teams up to speed. To produce the best results, these employee development efforts should also be connected to a wider sales enablement framework.

“As more companies embrace digital transformation, they engage with sales functions differently and need to recalibrate their internal sales functions,” says Jean-Philippe Courtois, EVP and President, Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing & Operations. “Today, anyone working in sales should have the ability to use AI, data and insights.”

Social media has also been a major driving force in encouraging businesses to embrace digital sales. For this reason, many sales transformation initiatives place an emphasis on the importance of social selling. Research from CSO Insights suggests that when it comes to embracing social selling, world-class organisations are two years ahead.

Viewing Transformation Through a Wider Lens

Nevertheless, the sales industry has entered a period of significant change, brought on by new technology, enhanced customer expectations and the increased availability of information. As a result, sales transformation projects need to help teams to evolve in more ways than simply improving digital sales strategies and methods.

This focus on ‘selling value’ is the key to many modern sales transformations and it is not restricted to digital sales. Regardless of whether a sale is made online, over the phone, or in person, the role of the salesperson is now to deliver value beyond simply supplying the product or service.

Over the course of the 2018 Buyer Preferences Study, CSO Insights learned that the top four things buyers want from sales reps in 2018 are for them to: research the buyer’s business prior to making contact; possess excellent communication skills; provide insight, perspective and expertise; and focus on the post-sale more.

All of these things can apply to digital sales, but they equally apply to field sales or to inside sales consulting staff. For this reason, while digital sales is a crucial part of a modern sales transformation, it should not be the entire focus and sales leaders must take a much broader approach to their change initiatives.

''Digital sales play an increasingly important role in the modern sales industry, thanks to the rise of cloud technology, AI and social media. Therefore, most sales transformation projects need to place a strong emphasis on this aspect. With that being said, digital sales is not the full story and research shows that there are many changes that organisations can make to improve the effectiveness of sales staff operating through other channels too.''

REF LIVRE BLANC https://www.csoinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/08/Buyer-Seller-Gap_v3.pdf

THE GROWING BUYER-SELLER GAP

Currently, only slightly more than half of sales representatives (53%) are meeting or exceeding their quotas according to our recent World-Class Sales Practices Study. While this is concerning in its own right, even more concerning is that this is the fifth straight year of decline.

The challenge today is that buyers are changing substantially faster and to a greater degree than sales organizations.

Meanwhile, sales organizations have been slow to change, perhaps for what they consider to be “good reason.” It’s risky to experiment with the function that has the greatest short-term impact on your revenues. And it’s daunting to distract a sales force with internal initiatives when the trade-off is selling time, the most precious of all resources. As a result, many sales “transformation” initiatives aren’t transformational but rather incremental improvements.

There has been much talk in the marketplace about sales jobs being eliminated as buyers move toward self-service models of purchase. Originally, the thought was that only transactional sales roles would be impacted. However, the increasing use of artificial intelligence technologies means that more traditionally consultative sales roles may be impacted as well.

In fact, over half (65.2%) of study respondents said that they found value in discussing their situations with salespeople.

With sellers being viewed as a less valuable resource, buyers are not inclined to engage them early in the buying process when they are working on clarifying their business problems and opportunities. While much is made of a final purchase decision, when a buyer “signs on the dotted line,” there is a range of decisions that they make along the path to a decision.

Organizations such Alibaba, Amazon and others see this loop as a business opportunity. They will continue to leverage AI-based technologies to push the limits of what can be bought in self-service mode. If sellers are not being seen as valuable, they can be excluded from the process (just like eliminating cashiers and checkout machines at Amazon Go). Today, you can buy complex industrial equipment of $250K USD or more on Alibaba. Ultimately, buyers will have access to the same breadth of reviews, recommendations and insights to buy commercial hydroelectric power systems as they have when they buy water filters for their home refrigerators.

What Buyers are Asking For

Understand my business

Consumers have gotten used to the idea that sellers already know them. So there is a huge disconnect when a seller shows up to a meeting and says, “Tell me about your business.”

Consumers expect more understanding, and sellers are finding themselves providing less. Sellers need consistency, a focused approach and new technology tools to truly exceed this expectation.

Demonstrate excellent communication skills This has been a focus of professional selling since the early ’80s. But again, we are talking about a much more intense expectation. Buyers are looking for an experience, not just an interaction. In the past, a seller may have had a handful of high-profile calls requiring intense preparation, formal materials, and rehearsals—“bringing your A-game.” Most calls, though, were informal check-ins. Today, the customer expectation is that every call is crisp, compelling and concise. Every interaction has to be worth the time. This covers the basics such as active listening and advanced questioning, but also includes negotiating, virtual presentations, storytelling, business case/ROI analysis, providing perspective (more on that below), and social selling techniques.

Focus on post-sale

A customer’s journey or path typically has three major parts: Awareness → Buying → Implementation & Adoption. The “sales process” takes place during the Buying Phase, and it’s where sellers are most heavily involved. However, buyers perceive that sellers are focusing too much of their energies on only the buying phase. Sellers aren’t perceived as focusing enough on, or demonstrating enough commitment to, what happens after the sale. On the other hand, the buyer is primarily focused on when the solution is implemented and value has been created for them.

Sales organizations need to carefully re-examine their account management methodology, the integration of their service and sales functions, as well as the potential for customer success or other hybrid sales/service models.

Provide insights and expertise

this is the least defined in the marketplace and yet the biggest opportunity for differentiation.

Perspective delivered with mediocre communications skills is superfluous dialogue. Perspective that doesn’t connect to the end-state of what the buyer wants to do is academic. Importantly, perspective can move a sales cycle, regardless of what phase of a buy cycle you might be in. Even after putting their vendors into a small product box and narrowing the scope of engagement, buyers are open to learning more.

In an environment where buyers see little differentiation among their vendors, adding perspective can be the difference between a buyer engaging early in a buying decision, being willing to step backwards in a buying process to reopen a discussion of need, or deciding to relegate sellers to simply providing contract terms, long after a decision has been made.

Putting “perspective” in perspective

When looking at those four seller capabilities together, perspective is the one that provides the greatest opportunity to differentiate and exceed expectations. It is a critical part of a sales methodology and deserves focus and attention.

However, perspective is not a standalone approach. Selling with perspective is an evolution of, not a replacement for, solution selling.

In addition, perspective can come during any point in the buying process, the customer path or within an individual sales interaction.

Finally, perspective and insights can come in a variety of forms. Much has been made of perspective as a way to create friction in an interaction. However, that is a delivery/communication tactic.

Solutions must be systemic in nature Closing the growing gap between buyers and sellers will take a systemic approach to transforming sales. Sales enablement will be at the heart of any solution. After all, the way in which sales enablement delivers its value of predictable sales results is by impacting “every sales interaction.” (See our coverage of Sales Enablement for the complete CSO Insights definition of sales enablement). However, this is not exclusively a sales enablement issue. Organizations will need to look at holistic changes impacting sales process, management execution, technology stacks, hiring profiles and more.

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https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/six-steps-to-transform-your-marketing-and-sales-capabilities

Create a transformation team built on trust
With the aspirations and fact base in place, the next stage is to create a resilient commercial-transformation team. While it is typically led by the CEO, the head of sales, the chief marketing officer, or even the chief operating officer, it should include marketing, sales, operations, and business-unit leaders. Team members need to be respected—their day-to-day colleagues should feel they can’t afford to lose them. It is also important to include HR and communications professionals alongside a project manager who keeps everyone focused on the next step of the journey and tracks the relevant metrics.

Since commercial transformations are long processes and involve taking risks, the team must invest in building deep levels of trust to keep morale high over time.

Score quick wins
Transformations don’t succeed unless they deliver substantive wins within 6 to 12 months. That’s why leading companies build momentum by focusing first on initiatives that have early impact—and help fund the transformation—then on building a case for further change efforts.

Activate the organization

Working with leadership, the transformation team has to devise a plan for pushing change throughout the organization. That requires a clear vision for building new habits at every level. For the C-suite, it’s about shifting mind-sets and developing new leadership and change-management skills. For managers, the focus needs to be on coaching, product knowledge, and problem solving. Frontline sales reps need specific skills in areas such as consultative selling and pricing analytics.

Activating an entire organization also requires finding the right people to make change happen throughout the business. More than 60 percent of our survey respondents said that having committed change leaders across the organization was “extremely important” to the transformation effort.

Imaginative communications are also necessary so that everyone continues to sit up, take notice, and act. These may involve internal or even external advertising campaigns, social media, town-hall meetings, and a raft of other communication efforts.

Commit to coaching

Coaching is so critical for success that we want to highlight it specifically. Good coaching is much more than going on a ride-along with your buddies or doing a sales pitch while someone watches. It’s about a real commitment to improving your people by providing constructive feedback, empathizing, helping them work through issues, and reinforcing their strengths—at the right cadence. It’s also about role modeling new behaviors, something that rarely happens in practice.

In sales, companies have found that a structured coaching program with at least weekly contact between coach and sales rep is vital to changing how people work. Such regular and frequent contact can be vital to the success of pilot projects.

Hardwire a performance culture

Hardwiring a high-performance culture into a company’s DNA is the only way to assure growth above the market year after year. This requires putting in place specific processes and tools to redirect the organization, reinforce behavior, and build new habits. But the really critical component is putting in place the right metrics to track and adjust performance. Without them, it’s virtually impossible to understand what is and isn’t working.

The best-performing companies develop dashboards to track progress. They include basic financial-performance metrics, of course, but they also track indicators of changes in behavior, such as understanding how marketing is helping the sales force sell, which tools helped close sales, and how often collaboration meetings occurred. These companies also actively track capability metrics, such as training courses employees have taken, whether they passed or failed, and how that correlates with performance in the field. They then use those calculations to adjust their capability-building efforts and zero in on performers who need more or different training.

The companies that effect a successful transformation go one step further by adding surveys and in-person interviews with their people to provide an even more comprehensive picture of commercial performance. They also develop customer-satisfaction measures—using sales, business units, and pricing as the “customers” of marketing. To be most effective, measurement must start before a transformation kicks in, so as to create a baseline. Then, at regular intervals, companies measure again to understand what progress has been made at both the organizational and capability levels.

About the author(s)
Homayoun Hatami is a director in McKinsey’s Paris office; Kevin McLellan is a principal in the Boston office, where Candace Lun Plotkin is a master expert; and Patrick Schulze is a principal in the Berlin office.

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