“Yes, I get it Glenn. But there are just so many other things we could do and invest in to improve our sales force effectiveness, and I am just not sure if sales team optimisation is our best bet.”  “ I hear you, Jim.  I suggest we step this through logically, and see if we can pin a tail on that donkey.  To that end, I am more than happy if some other initiative deserves your higher priority.”  “Go for it”, Jim implores.

“OK, here we go…..”  I have done enough homework on Jim’s sales organisation to know the answer, but I genuinely want to openly conduct the step through with him, as I have suggested.  “Let’s checklist the basic criteria………”

  • You have at least a handful of reps on the road plying their territory based customers and prospects ?
  • The reps in turn make their visits on a large and heterogeneous base of customers and pool of prospects ?
  • These customers in turn make regular repeat orders and re-orders of your consumable products and/or services ?
  • And in so-doing, these customers will typically entertain more than one supplier of your product/service , such that you are always playing the “share of wallet” game ?

“Tick all of the above”, agrees Jim.  “That’s us.”

“OK, let’s now test  you current RoI against those criteria………”

  • The total cost to the company to fully mobilise your sales team each year is $X M
  • The total margin on the revenue they are responsible for keeping and growing is $Y M
  • If the ratio of Y : X is 10: 1 or less than the degree to it is less adds further weight to the case for sales team optimisation, simply by virtue of lower than “norm” RoI

“Tick again, Glenn”, confides Jim.  “That’s us.”

“Jim, frankly, if you are not running your sales team optimisation as an integral component of your whole company budget, and your first priority as Head of the Sales Organisation, then what are you doing?”.

Keep an eye out for next week’s post; Disrupt first – the optimise your sales organisation


Want to learn more? Check out our Sales Team Optimisation Series – The four phases of sales team optimisation

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