More sales results with less selling?

Sales people, especially in B2B industries, have been under pressure for a few years. Changes in buying behaviour, Internet, marketing automation and strengthening procurement functions are the most obvious forces driving the change. Some claim B2B sales people population is on decline globally. All sales leaders know that sales cycles are getting longer and buyers are very critical and demanding.

I have worked with companies across number of industries including telecommunications, industrial products, software, business services and health care and the same challenges seem to repeat in slightly different forms. Today I’ll discuss productivity in sales.

Productivity in sales function and sales processes is one of the evergreen topics. Sales organisations do not scale up in the same manner manufacturing and production processes do. If you hire one sales person more to a sales team of five people, you will most likely not get the 20 % improvement in results or productivity. On the contrary, you probably get lower productivity. Why is that? My humble opinion is that specialisation is missing from sales profession. Sales people are supposed to execute very different types of activities and also manage themselves and their time. At the same time, sales people are just one part of the whole organisation. Having distributed and disconnected management to sales people does often lead into clashes. I claim that sales productivity can be improved through application of Lean principles, specialisation and centralised management. This does not happen through sales methods.

Application of Lean principles in Sales can yield results. Lean principles, focusing on value and eliminating waste, are very simple concepts. They make sense both in manufacturing as well as in sales and marketing. At the moment only a handful of companies have applied Lean in sales. Luckily, it seems that an increasing number of companies are becoming interested about Lean in Sales.

Is productivity an issue in B2B sales?

Is lack of specialisation an issue in sales and sales management?

Is sales managed in isolation of other functions?

Take a look at my latest book on Amazon.com (titled Lean Sales) for end to end sales management methodology based on Lean principles and 20 case studies of implementation.