Just two different and complicated ways of saying the same thing?  More obfuscation created by consultants to assist Heads of Sales de-clutter what did not need to be cluttered in the first place? Well, not really.  A rich understanding and appreciation of these business imperatives turns out to be one of those chicken and egg stories.

Sales team optimisation (StO) should precede Sales exec effectiveness (SeE). At least when viewed from an annual cycle perspective.  In the B2B corporate world,  the  most relevant cycle context is the annual budget cycle.  Fair to say that both StO and SeE should also be thought of in the context of continuous improvement, and so thinking about one preceding the other is not so helpful in this context.  For the sake of my point, let’s run with the connection to the company’s annual budget cycle.

Best practice sales organisations “run the ruler” over their sales team(s) once a year as an integral part of the budgeting cycle.  In this way, the exercise carries the same degree of cost:revenue analysis and scrutiny as the whole-company budgeting process. This is the heart and soul of StO.  It is the business case …. the cost to be invested in deploying the sales team into the market versus the revenue and margin they are expected to return.  More specifically, it brings the following critical sales team benchmarks together into a pseudo accounting equation………

•             Right headcount

•             Structured, deployed to right customer segment alignment

•             Benchmarked against right activity rates and role bandwidth

To achieve right customer coverage and prospect penetration

•             Right classification

•             To target right visit frequency

•             With right value added

•             Within right business relationship

Click here to access The Sales Team “Law of Gravity” equation.

When done well, it creates the optimum environment in which the sales team members can individually and collectively operate to achieve and surpass their revenue and margin goals.  It also flushes out team and individual Sales Exec requirements from an effectiveness perspective.

There is still more to this topic and so we will pick up and continue on next month.

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.