It has always struck me that the one department that should get more support than any other is sales. After all no sales, no cash, no cash, no salaries, no investments - well, frankly if sales don’t win then the future isn’t that great really. Sales is the engine of your organisation and if you’re not investing in supporting them at the point of critical need, then you could be leaving success to chance.
‘But’, I hear you say, ‘we pay them the big money to bring in the deals. They should just know what to do to win.’ Another says, ‘They get training. We invested thousands in that last programme. They should be fully equipped.’ Yep, true. Well, kind of. The thing is, it’s everyone that loses if sales don’t win at every available opportunity. Not winning enough means headcount cuts. It means under investment in innovation. It means cutting budgets. It means doing without all the stuff that made your company a cool place to work out. Ever wondered why that nice coffee machine in the lobby is now for guests only? I’ll tell you. Sales didn’t win as much as they hoped.
The thing is this. Even in a downturn, some companies win more than others. So, where do you want to be? Do you want to be winning more than others or just settling for the line that says, ‘the conditions are tough out there right now, we expect a decline on last year’s numbers.’ Only you can decide where your head is at on that one.
I can tell you one thing though. When sales win and exceed expectations everyone in the company benefits. And that is why every company should provide sales with support at the point of critical need. If you are going to tie resource up supporting opportunities then you’d better make damn sure sales have the best chance of winning. Why would you allocate their time to opportunity x, y or z otherwise? I mean you wouldn’t put money on a horse you knew stood no chance of winning would you??
Deals, especially, the large complex game-changers, cannot be left to chance. They cannot be thrown support at the 11th hour with an expectation that it will make a difference. If you want to give your sales teams the maximum chance of winning, then early, high value customer engagement is critical. And that takes planning and an independent eye. Someone who will stand in the room and guide a team through the thinking that will actually create a plan of engagement that has relevance and impact in front of customers. Someone who will call it like it is, if there is still work to be done.
Having spent literally years in sales leadership in ‘big corporates’ I know the challenges that sales teams face. And I empathise. No, I really do empathise. Corporate process and often the underlying culture provide a significant headwind into which sales must march on a daily basis. I will never forget hearing a senior sales leader say that he ‘performed a miracle for his company every day’ such were the organisational obstacles he faced. This headwind translates into everything that is bad for sales: lack of time, slipping behind competition, reactivity not proactivity, doing without thinking and organisational pressures that restrict commercial innovation. Yet, from my experience, if you can get a team in a room for a day and provide a framework for creative thinking then you will at least stack the cards a little more in their favour. And given that sales effectively pay everyone’s salary, why on earth wouldn’t you do that?