Sherlock Tomes, back on the case with tomes of writings for your glossary of sales team optimisation definitions.  After last month’s installment, one punter asked me the difference between sales team optimisation and sales optimisation.  Good question.   Well not all sales organisations possess a sales team to execute their sales function and process.  Think about a sales organisation that goes to market purely on-line.  Think about a sales organisation that is retail site based.  These organisations will lend themselves to sales optimisation, but not necessarily sales team optimisation…since they do not possess the classical on-the-road team of Sales Execs, that we often relate to in B2B corporate sales.  Thanks for the question.  Anyway, on we go…

Sales organisation = the functional departments that directly interface with the customers, most notably the sales team, the customer service team, any team directly interfacing with individual customers in the name of sales or service support.

Sales team efficiency = The minimisation of activities (visit or non-visit) that relate to reactive fix-ups, product or service issues, or anything else that pulls the Sales exec off planned business development oriented visits.  Has a direct input to sales team productivity. Office : territory time ratio is a useful barometer.

Sales team design = Another outcome of sales team optimisation, this element refers to the desired or modelled quantitatives – headcount; visit capacity, with the qualitatives – structure, deployment, role bandwidth, account management and prospecting pipeline skillset requirements.

Sales process = relates to the co-ordinated, sequenced activities executed by the Sales Execs, other internal stakeholder, externals (customers, prospects) in the execution of finding, maintaining, and growing needs-solutions based relationships.  In reality, the sales process is a series of processes, most characteristically, the account management (farming) process and the prospecting (hunting) process.

Sales function = any person, team or department that bears the responsibility of sales accountability and sales task specification in job descriptions and team charters. Highly related to sales process, but not the same thing.

Sales system = quite literally, all of the above.  Additionally, it will usually include the sales automation-customer database- CRM supporting software.

We turn our attention next month to the key levers for modelling and controlling Sales Team productivity and RoI.

Visiting The Next Level’s website can help put this discussion in perspective. Or simply send us a message via the Contact Us section and we will gladly answer any questions you may have or organise to come out and have a discussion as to what The Next Level Sales System can do for you and your business.