Revenue Leaders, This is What You're Trying to Enable and Scale

For as long as the sales profession has been in existence there has been a belief that sales is an art and not a science. Everyone believed (and many still do) that sales is all about the relationships and that great salespeople have “the gift of gab.”   Today however, modern sales and recruiting leaders and sales enablement leaders know that sales (and recruiting) is just as much science as it is art. 

We now have the sales enablement tools we need to track sales activities and sales behaviors and link them to sales results. We no longer need to rely on gut instinct and guess at what is working. This is great news for L&D and sales enablement leaders because you can target your sales training and recruiter training efforts much more effectively.

Through our work with hundreds of staffing firms and consulting with their sales and recruiting teams and executive leadership, we’ve identified two levels of sales team success; Relationships, and Sales Process Adoption.  To help you understand what it is you’re trying to enable and scale across your staffing organization let’s consider the strength of customer relationship capability model and the sales process capability adoption model. 

Keep in mind that capability maturity models are often mistaken for a collection of best practices. The reality is they are designed to illustrate the phases an organization progresses through for continuous improvement in a particular discipline or function. The intent is to help business leaders determine what practices and perceptions currently exist within their organization and provide a roadmap for the organization to pursue ongoing improvement.  Maturity models can take industry “best practices” and convert them into “future state” or next steps. 

As you read through them, think about your sales organization and which level your sales team-holistically-falls into.

Strength of Customer Relationship Capability Model
The strength of customer relationship capability model depicted below highlights how sellers and their sales effectiveness evolves over time. As you develop more and more of your sellers into “strong promoters” and “trusted advisors” you increase overall team quota attainment which accelerates the growth of your organization. 

By doing a quick evaluation of your sales organization's capability and capturing “today’s behaviors” associated with each phase, you will gain an understanding of:

1. What business capabilities are lacking 
2. What skills and knowledge are needed
3. What training and coaching is needed
4. What can be done next to improve the sophistication and effectiveness of your sales team not to mention your training, learning and development

Level 1: Trivial Commodity Supplier

• Reps face pricing pressure
• Reps often perceived as a commodity, offers no value, perceived as order taker
• Transactional, reactive, often beat by the competition
• Struggle to get access to decision makers, relegated to gatekeepers

Level 2: Preferred Supplier

• Sell and operate on price, not value
• Quick to make customer concessions
• Inconsistently get access to decision makers
• Reps often get stuck “selling to one point of contact”  

Level 3 :  Strong Promoter

• Reps consistently get access to decision makers 
• Cast strong influence on outcomes (of deals)
• Frequently consulted as a resource by customer
• Respected for his/her knowledge

Level 4: Trusted Advisor

• Viewed as part of the decision making process
• Respected for his/her insights beyond products/technical knowledge
• Often consulted in advance of decisions
• Provides perspective, insight, value-add

Sales Process Capability Adoption Model 
The sales process capability adoption model depicted below highlights how sales capabilities and sales effectiveness improves with increasing levels of sales process capability and adoption. The more mature and the greater the adoption of your sales process, the more you are able to scale sales effectiveness and accelerate your growth. 

As you read through them, think about your sales organization and which level your sales team-holistically-falls into.

Chaotic

• Company lacks a standard process for how reps engage prospects and customers
• Salespeople are allowed to do their own thing, “wild, wild west”
• When reps underperform, company looks to replace the rep, not fix the process
• Companies with chaotic sales process are at risk; 80%+ of revenue comes from 20% of producers

Ad-Hoc

• Sales process is documented but lacks awareness
• Sales process adoption not measured, managed or coached to by sales managers
• Successful sales reps “do their own thing,” less successful and inexperienced reps are encouraged to follow the sales process

Formal

• Formal sales process is document and configured in CRM/ATS
• Sales process is actively measured, monitored and coached to
• Sales process is fully understood and adopted by sales team
• Sales process is periodically reinforced
• Sales managers and sales reps can easily identify and diagnose sales deficiencies and provide stage specific coaching

Dynamic & Predictable

• The sales process is actively monitored and measured
• Continuous feedback of sellers process and execution
• Continuously updated to reflect market changes, changes in buyer behavior
• Agile to adapt to different customers buying processes
• Sales behaviors, steps can be modeled
• Following the process leads to predictable results

Investing the requisite time and effort to effectively enable and scale your sales and delivery teams is a full-time job and likely just one reason why it may be time your organization hires a full-time sales enablement manager.

What steps are you taking to scale your revenue growth?   How are you improving team capability and effectiveness with regards to the customer relationship capability model and the sales process capability adoption model?

To learn more about how to enable your sales and recruiting teams and scale your revenue growth, check out our eBook, The Staffing Leaders Guide to Sales Enablement.