SALES AND SALES EXCELLENCE
Sales Excellence
Raising the standards of selling
The discipline of Sales Excellence is relatively new in the business world. Many companies have employees with the title but their roles and attitudes towards the principle vary.
One definition often used is “consistent improvement and surpassing of Key Sales Objectives”.
However, simply meeting Key Performance Indicators or Key Sales Objectives is not enough to achieve true Sales Excellence. To reach this level, you need to set a high bar and determine a clear standard to strive towards. Don’t settle for mediocrity, aim for excellence in all aspects of your sales process.
How do you define it
As a guide and personal opinion, take your average sales conversion figure over a reasonable period (6 or 12-Months) then double or triple it. For sure, if you’re converting 10% or 20% on average, you should be aiming for at least 30% or 40% respectively. From that point, you need to determine the KPI’s or KSO’s to measure moving forward.
Our desires for continuous improvement help us feel we are making progress, often feeling set-backs when our growth stops or performance declines, even just temporarily.
One of the greatest aspects of Sales Excellence however is that growth can still be determined, even if attributes pause or slide-backwards. That comes to the management of the process to introduce what is required and how to maintain it.
The different sides of Sales Excellence
To help ascertain this, let’s have a look at the Near to Far Sides of Sales Excellence. The Near Side first, for example, on-going Sales Growth, Month-on-Month, is tremendous and especially if that aligns to or exceeds Monthly Targets.
The pace of growth may ease however, or a short-fall be experienced against Targets. One way to save face is to measure averages so that you know performances are improving (on average) and everything is still progressing. Easy.
Now the Far Side. Assuming Sales Team efforts are consistent, one reason for the drop-off may be market demands or market concerns, with clients not being able to make Sales commitments at that given time.
Every Sales Team will have experienced this, using “Market Concerns” as an excuse. However, Sales Excellence, in this example at least, will first have anticipated this, engaged positively with clients and put forward honest viewpoints that are believable.
How to achieve Sales Excellence
Other aspects are that Sales Excellence will have attributed client’s concerns and even if just for one month, will have diversified sales efforts to make up for the anticipated shortfall. Now that’s quite a complex example and suggests having a Crystal Ball, but breaking-down the details it actually portrays simplicity:
i) Engaging consistent communications with all clients, large & small, both discussing and anticipating how you can add value at all times, reassuring them of your support.
ii) Using creative Sales & Marketing solutions, possibly built-up over time, so that you can switch and support clients as well as your own company, avoiding a shortfall.
iii) Trust …and a positive mental attitude (even bordering on Resilience).
The parameters of Sales Excellence
Now the above are wide parameters, the Near & Far Sided, but they do ascertain how closed-minded some definitions of Sales Excellence actually are.
My intention is to follow-up on this feature in different ways (true Sales Excellence is way too large and complex to determine in 700-words or less) aiming to break it down into different facets so that even just engaging small elements of Sales Excellence can help (you) make a huge difference.
The good news, the gap between typical Sales and Sales Excellence has just been identified, noting how powerful, profitable and fascinating the discipline of Sales Excellence can be.
Thank you for reading this feature, it is greatly appreciated and hopeful that it’s helped and added value in some way. Feel free to Follow or let’s connect on LinkedIn as it will be tremendous to have your company.
