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SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT

Your sales force can be your company’s most powerful precision weapon, and the right management approach can provide you with the key to unleash its full potential. Gaining the right knowledge, customer insights and market predictions to establish the right sales force size, coverage, territory alignment and structure is not an easy task, but Trindent will help you to do the following:

  • Design and plan sales force deployment including size, structure and territory alignment by knowing who your target customer is to define the right sales call frequency and coverage.
  • Develop innovative process changes for your sales force that frees up lost time and underutilized time for the active selling activities which will drive your business.
  • Provide the right planning and results measurement tools that accurately qualifies sales visits, and offers the right kind of information to sales representatives in real time.
  • Implement a superb experience at all customer touch points to maximize the attraction and retention of customers.

Why is there opportunity in your sales force?
Assuming that a business has already been efficient in identifying (and making available) products or services that someone is willing to buy, its ability to exploit that opportunity profitably then depends heavily on sales proficiency.  Perhaps more than any other operational function, sales has the ability to make the difference between a mediocre and a stellar financial result.

Over the last two years, we have compiled an average 'model' describing how sales forces (both inside and outside) used their available time.  Instead of a self-report, we actually use consultants to 'live a day in the life' and record actual time utilization along the following lines:

Active Selling - Time spent engaging with the customer
Prospecting - Researching and developing relationships with prospects
Problem Solving - Resolving customer problems or internal firefighting
Administration - CRM data input, Internal meetings, Paperwork etc.
Travelling Time - Time spent moving from sales call to sales call
Non-Value Added - Time spent on activities unrelated to sales

Having shown that only 21% of time available is spent actively selling or prospecting, how effectively that time is used is clearly all the more important.  In order to gauge this, we used a simple scale ranking system for those we observed, rating them in eight key sales skills before, during and after each call (both face-to-face or by telephone).  We observed a variety of deficiencies, with an overall average of 38% being assessed as 'poor.'  The impact of this is considerable.


How do we capitalize on these opportunities?

A Trindent Sales Force Management engagement is a collaborative program that re-engineers the selling process and tools used to manage so that active selling and prospecting time is maximized.

Qualification - Build a framework to segment customers and focus time spent.
Quantity - Improve the quantity of sales calls conducted.
Quality - Enhance the quality of the sales call itself.

Although every engagement is different, there are commonalities.  We will frequently find and strip away unnecessary processes, administrative activities, and travel time.  This will uncover additional time which can be redeployed to maximize active selling and prospecting activities.

Trindent also puts the right tools in place so that activities, sales volumes, margins and key sales performance indicators are transparent and manageable.  We do not install 'canned' CRM solutions - and most tools are custom-built applications that supplement the tools you already use to manage.

Finally, to ensure that changes are sustainable and accepted at the managerial level, Trindent will act as an 'executive coach' at each level of the organization to make sure that the new processes and tools are ingrained in the business.

SALES FORCE TIME UTILIZATION MODEL


















Source: 2006-2008 Pre-engagement study data (Approx 2,500 hours sampled)


This model is a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive summary of how a sales representative can spend their work day.  Scheduled time off such as lunches and breaks were not included in the summary.  This data set has been compiled from clients across multiple industries, segments and countries.




 
          SALES CALL QUALITY ANALYSIS

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Sales call quality can be quantified, helping find growth opportunities as a result.  Trindent will then collaborate with front-line staff to put solutions in place. Often, the circulation of best practices and targeted training efforts will success in correcting the problem.  Trindent has the expertise to help.
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