Introduction:

Sales force:

Sales force comprises of persons responsible for selling products or services via direct contact
with the customer. Sales force members may be paid a fixed salary regardless of sales volume or
may receive a small base salary plus commissions calculated as a percentage of revenue sold.
Non-commissioned sales forces are appropriate when selling requires the involvement of a team
of individuals or when there is an extremely long sales cycle. For example, some complex
industrial services may require several years of effort before the prospect is sold. Salespeople
may be full-time employees of the seller or may be independent, nonexclusive agents. Member
of the sales force are assigned a sales territory that may be segmented by exclusive or
nonexclusive geographic or market segments, product or product lines, or by specific customers
or prospects.

Role of sales force:

The role of the sales force depends to a large extent on whether a company is selling directly to
consumers or to other businesses. In consumer sales, the sales force is typically concerned
simply with taking and closing orders. These salespeople are not responsible for creating demand
for the product, since demand for the product has already been created by advertising and
promotion. They may provide the consumer with some product information, but individuals
involved in consumer sales are often not concerned with maintaining long-term customer
relationships. Examples of consumer sales forces include automobile salespersons and the sales
staffs found in a variety of retail stores.

The sales force takes on a completely different role in business-to-business sales. Industrial sales
forces, for example, may be required to perform a variety of functions. These may include
prospecting for new customers and qualifying leads, explaining who the company is and what its
products can do, closing orders, negotiating prices, servicing accounts, gathering competitive and
market information, and allocating products during times of shortages

Sales force productivity:

 For decades, businesses have embraced  productivity and cost controls in operational functions
like manufacturing and distribution; programs like Total Quality Management (TQM), Six
Sigma and LEAN are thriving all over the map, except in the sales department. Sales
organizations can benefit dramatically from adopting some basic principles
of productivity management, simple business techniques that lower costs, improve customer
profitability and retention, and reduce sales-person turnover. 

Metrics for sales force productivity:

An article reported that 11% and 12% of companies, respectively, assess their year-over-year
improvement in sales force productivity using these metrics:

• Return on sales investment – i.e., ratio of direct and allocated sales cost for the sales
organization as % of revenue; and

• Return on sales compensation investment – i.e., ratio of direct cost of sales staff as % of
revenue.

Neither of the above is a ‘return on’ measure. They are expense ratios that might be proper in
monitoring the cost of a company’s sales effort or sales compensation. Clearly, the metrics don’t
view a company’s sales force as a productive asset or sales compensation as an investment in
production. More appropriate indicators of sales force productivity would include such metrics
as:

• Revenue ÷ Number of sales calls on current and prospective customers;

• Revenue ÷ Number of current and prospective customers;

• New Customer Revenue ÷ Number of new customers “won” during the fiscal year;

• Current Customer Revenue ÷ Number of active customers at the beginning of the fiscal year;

• Revenue ÷ Revenue potential of all territories;

• Revenue ÷ Revenue potential of all opportunities in the pipeline during the fiscal year;

• Revenue ÷ Number of sales force members assigned sales quotas or goals; and

• Revenue ÷ Direct and allocated overhead investment in sales resources.

Each of the above metric can be used to compare the results generated by different sales jobs,
salespeople or sales channels as well as trends over time. The value and precision of metrics
gauging sales force productivity and sales compensation effectiveness increase when the amount
and source of revenue and revenue growth can be directly linked to specific sales resources and
actions. This requires knowledge of the sales organization, go-to-market strategies, sales roles,
sales processes and sales cycles. One, aggregate sales force calculation will not be as revealing
as multiple calculations in situations where indirect, overlay and pre- and post-sales jobs
contribute significantly to a company’s overall sales result.
Ten golden rules for sales force productivity:
Successful sales people bring in lots of deals, no matter at what cost. Productive sales people
bring in lots of high-profit deals, at manageable costs, retain more customers, and are happier at
their jobs. Here are the Ten Golden Rules of Sales Force Productivity.

1. Know what you’re selling time is worth. It's worth a whole lot more than your billable hours,
your payroll, or your commission check. Selling time is Opportunity Value - and it's probably
worth $1,100 an hour or more.

2. Selling time is an investment. Don't bet an $1100 hour on a $100 win.

3. Be selective with your prospects. Choose prospects that match your ideal customer; otherwise
you'll blow more of those expensive hours.

4. Time spent qualifying the right customer beats time spent flogging the wrong customer.

5. If you're going to lose, lose early. With good qualifying skills, you can find out if the prospect
is worth the effort, early in the relationship. Walk away before you invest in a demo, proposal, or
negotiations.

6. Take NO for an answer. If the prospect's not right for you, don't pursue it.

7. It's NOT all about the money. Money is the result of your effort, not the goal.

8. It IS all about the customer. If the customer wants what you've got, you'll succeed - as long as
you focus on delivering value.

9. Create metrics. Set targets for all aspects of the sales process. If you can't measure it you can't
manage it. And if you can't manage it, you can't improve it.

10. Track performance. Once you set your targets and metrics, track performance relentlessly. Be
honest with yourself.

Improving sales force productivity (an example of the pharmaceutical

company):
Improving Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) consists of four phases:
 1. Diagnostic phase – evaluating current performance and identifying performance
improvement opportunities.
2. Prioritizing opportunities to improve and develop solutions.
3. Implementing change.
4. Measuring effectiveness and monitoring performance.

1. Diagnostic phase:
Selling pharmaceuticals is incredibly competitive.  Each year we see sales teams work to get
more calls per day from their representatives, improve customer targeting and message
delivery, implement CRM systems, and develop better programs for physicians. 
 
While all of these tactics have impact - whether that impact is positive or negative -, we have
identified two traits successful SFE initiatives share:
 Cross-functional teams: Utilizing a wide range of team members ensures that a wide
range of experiences and expertise are brought to bear to identify opportunities and
develop creative solutions. 
 Continuous improvement process: Repeatedly cycling through the three
phases of assessment, implementation and monitoring ensures that SFE improvement is
an evolutionary, or "Kaizen", rather than a revolutionary, or "Big Bang" process.

Assessing Current Sales Practices

 
Successful SFE initiatives start by building a cross-functional team with a common, well
defined objective and charter.  This team should be responsible for identifying and ranking
improvement opportunities and implementing change.  A good cross-functional
team would include sales representatives, sales managers, sales trainers, product marketers,
and sales analysts, with support from finance and human resources. 
 
The first objective of this team is to fully assess current sales force processes, strategies, and
effectiveness.  A three-pronged approach utilizing field travel, diagnostic sales
representative surveys, and data analysis will provide not only a balanced scorecard, but
also insights useful for developing creative solutions.
 
This initial diagnostic phase can be completed very quickly by conducting a survey.  The
survey will help you better map perceptions surrounding effectiveness issues, identify
differences across regions, and track changes in attitudes over time.  A web based survey is
both convenient and anonymous. The team e-mails a link to every participant, they respond
quickly, and results are automatically tabulated.
 
While the survey is being conducted, all team members should be in the field observing “a day
in the life of a rep”.  The field travel should be structured to reflect the experience of the sales
force and the stage of the SFE initiative.  Early in the SFE initiative, it is important to make a
very broad assessment of all SFE enablers.  In this setting, information is collected by
observing calls, interviewing the representative between calls and gaining an understanding of
territory and account planning.  In a more mature SFE initiative, the field travel should shift to
a balance of observing and coaching on the “SFE changes” and identifying new opportunities.
 
As soon as the survey results can be analyzed and field travel completed (ideally within 2
weeks of the initial or cycle meeting) the team should meet to debrief, create hypotheses about
root causes of “opportunities”, and develop a data analysis plan.  As an example,
RMCI recently worked with an experienced team that had become concerned about
the high numbers of their representatives calling on the same target physicians.  In analyzing
the information surrounding this issue, we focused on identifying the number of representatives
calling on each target physician, the total number of calls by target physician, and the impact of
calls and representatives on share and share change.
 
Within two weeks, the team should meet again.  Analysis of the data will either support or
refute the original hypotheses.  In this meeting, the team should be prepared to rank
opportunities and begin developing solutions to address them.

2. Prioritizing opportunities to improve and develop solutions:

Dig to the Roots
It is very important for the team to confirm the root causes of the problem to avoid solving the
wrong problem.  The source of the problem may seem obvious, but this is usually not the case.  
 
We recently worked with a sales force on the need to increase frequency on key physicians.  Our
work with the team showed that the root causes of the issue were not really understood. Several
team members believed that it was simply a reflection of “reps not making enough calls each
day,” but as we dug to the roots, we found several possible causes, including:
• Reps focus on calls per day, leading them to call on non-targets to achieve daily call
goal
• There are too many target physicians - the desired frequency can’t be achieved
• Frequent target churn causes reps to invest time building new relationships
• There are an excessive number of days for training, medical conventions and corporate
initiatives
 
The team subsequently focused on solving some of these problems.  The solutions proved much
more effective than if the team had charged off to address their initial hypothesis and simply
raised the daily call goal.
 
Getting to the root causes of an issue isn’t easy, especially for teams that don’t do this activity
often.  Once again, the use of resources such as operations managers and external facilitators can
help to add value.
 

Success “In the Details”

Once root causes are understood, the team can begin developing solutions to the right
problem.  In the solutions development step, our experience suggests one specific key to success
- solutions must be sufficiently detailed. 
 
We commonly see solutions that are well thought out at a conceptual level, but not well
implemented.  Most often, it's because the solution doesn't contain enough specific details—It
can't be implemented in a consistent fashion across the sales force. 
 
Early in our SFE experience, we believed we were successful when a team developed the
following “detailed plan”:  The team working on improving physician targeting agreed on the
following:
• Each territory will have between 100-115 target physicians
• Physicians will be re-targeted based on total potential
• Target lists are locked for six months
• Reps will have authority to eliminate “difficult to see” targets
 
While this solution may seem specific, many questions arose upon implementation:
• What defines total potential - value in a key class, value across all classes, and lifetime
value of the physician?  What is value?  Total prescribing?  New initiations? Total
Rx’s that are vulnerable to switching?
• How many high potential doctors can a rep drop due to low access?  2%? 20%?  And
what constitutes low access?
• What determines if a territory has 100 or 115 physicians?
 
It isn't possible to anticipate all questions or decisions raised during implementation, but teams
that focus on building the most detailed solutions achieve the best results.
 
In order to make the most progress in fixing sales execution gaps identified in the diagnosis
phase, firms must carefully form teams, identify root causes, and develop sufficiently detailed
solutions. Next month we’ll discuss the keys to ensuring successful implementation of these
changes.
 3. Implementing change:

Build the Vision
"This one step -- choosing a goal and sticking to it -- changes everything." -Scott Reed

In today’s selling environment change is not optional.  There is so much change occurring in the
industry -- technologies, company strategies, regulations, products and customers -- that sales
reps' jobs change constantly.  Top performers thrive in this fluid environment. 

 The top performing sales forces are the organizations that adapt to change best – effectively
implementing plans and strategies.

 These high performing sales forcing use a process that referred to as "TRACK" to achieve
change.  TRACK is the acronym for the five factors most important in effecting change with a
sales force.  These are:

 Team,
 Recognize emotional impact,
 Accelerate,
 Communicate and coach,
 Keep focused
 

In the last two phases, the concentration was on importance of a strong cross-functional team. 
This team remains critical in implementing change.  There is one important difference for this
phase –- the team must be powerful enough to guide change.  A common frustration for teams is
that they do an outstanding job of diagnosing the situation and identifying necessary change, but
lack the organizational power required to drive changes. The initiative falls short of achieving it's
objective and the team members are demoralized.

The second key success factor is to recognize that change is not achieved through logic. 
Changing behavior is an emotional decision, challenging the team to identify and develop
messages that promote an emotional commitment to change.  For example: It seems logical that
all sales calls be entered into a call reporting system daily.  However, simply explaining how this
daily task balances workload and ensures highest quality data isn't powerful enough.  It doesn't
offer a sales rep enough motivation to change their call reporting from weekly to daily. 
Appealing to a rep's emotions -- either by informing them of special bonuses available or making
them aware of severe consequences of not entering calls daily -- will have more impact.

Building on the emotional nature of change, Accelerating change gets more action.  Product
recalls and competitive launches are outstanding examples of how urgency and accelerated
demands can rapidly change representatives’ behavior.  Not every “change” justifies this high
level of urgency, but when considerable change is required, accelerate implementation and create
urgency.  Don't let anyone delay until tomorrow what can be done today.  Every day delayed
decreases the perceived importance of the activity.

Focus on Change Every Day

“You’ve got to talk about change every second of the day.” – Jack Welch
 

The fourth success factor centers on communicating and coaching.  The goal here is to promote a
deep understanding and commitment to the change.  Remember the "telephone game". 
Communicate what needs to be done using many channels and with high frequency to ensure
understanding.  Remember how you think about external customers:

Actions speak louder than words. 

Symbols help communicate and reinforce the message.  Frequency is key. 

Apply these same concepts to getting your sales force to take action.

 The District Sales Manager (DSM) is your greatest resource in delivering and reinforcing the
change message to reps.  The DSM should support and reinforce each day during field travel and
each week during district teleconferences and rep updates.

Finally, Keep focused and drive to 100% implementation.  Antibiotics are losing effectiveness as
bacteria are developing resistance.  This happens because patients quit taking the antibiotic
before it is 100% effective.  If you shift your focus to a new initiative before achieving full
implementation, you risk development of  "organizational resistance".  Each future change will
be more difficult to implement as  the  "resistant strains" grow.  Achieving full implementation
of your current initiative is the best thing you can do to ensure success of your next initiative.

4. Measuring and monitoring performance:

The fourth component of the process involves measuring and monitoring improvement.  Raising
the level of sales force effectiveness requires sustained commitment and effort.  By the time
you’ve successfully completed the first three stages of the process, it’s tempting to declare
victory and move on to other important priorities.  Unfortunately, many otherwise successful
sales force effectiveness initiatives ultimately fail because managers don’t fully implement an
effective measurement and monitoring process. 

Why Measuring and Monitoring Are Important

In previous phases, we’ve identified the key drivers of sales success – targeting, frequency,
message, and programs.  Nevertheless, sales success also depends on intangible factors that are
difficult to quantify, such as the rep’s ability to build relationships and “connect” with
customers.  For this reason, many managers argue that quantitative measures of sales
effectiveness are either irrelevant or at best tell only part of the story.  While we agree that the
key drivers are not the only factors that determine sales results, our experience with hundreds of
sales forces in more than 50 countries demonstrates that systematically and effectively measuring
and monitoring key selling activities significantly improves sales results. 

Let’s consider another situation in which intangible skills play an important role.  During the
1980s hospitals began to track physician behaviors on procedures such as bypass surgery or
artificial hip replacement.  Seeing that physician behavior, and resulting patient outcomes, varied
greatly, hospitals established protocols to standardize behaviors.

Today most hospitals use standardized procedures to guide care teams involved in even the most
complex disease treatment.  Measuring and managing doctors’ compliance with protocols for lab
tests, medications, and surgical procedures has helped dramatically improve average length of
hospital stay, re-admission rates, mortality rates, and total costs.  How can you apply similar
approaches to improving your sales force productivity?

Outcomes vs. Activities

In the pharmaceutical business, the ultimate measure of success is sales.  Whether the metric is
growth in total sales, new prescriptions, market share, or product switches, outcome measures
are the best indication of success.  But, just as patient mortality rates tell very little about the
procedures that are most effective in healing people, sales figures alone don’t shed much insight
on the behaviors and activities that drive sales success.  To gain a broader understanding of sales
performance, managers must effectively track and manage key behaviors and activities.  The
remainder of this article provides examples of key sales effectiveness metrics that will drive and
sustain the impact of sales effectiveness initiatives.

Best practices to improve sales force productivity:

Using best practices to improve sales force productivity, achieving substantial sales growth from
an existing sales force, which produces improved profitability, may offer a fast, attractive
payback for many businesses with a large direct sales force. The leverage available is very high.
When it comes to improving sales force productivity, there needs to be a climate of
accountability, support and success. To get the most out of your sales force, you need to let them
know what is expected of them, take the responsibility of getting results on their own and arm
them with the tools they will need to succeed. Structure and support is how you increase sales
force productivity, and once you have that environment in place, your sales people will either
thrive or they will need to be replaced.

1. Create a set of metrics that can be used as base measurements for gauging sales activity.
The metrics need to establish the tasks that you feel will help the sales force accomplish
production goals. Analyze how many phone calls a day the sales people that are reaching
their sales numbers are making, and create a per-day outbound sales call metric for the
entire force. If you have outside sales reps, then set a goal for the number of
appointments you expect them to have each week. Hold representatives accountable for
reaching these metrics and create an environment where the entire team makes sure they
hit their metric numbers each week.

2. Conduct weekly sales training sessions that cover everything from the basics of sales to
the more complicated topics such as how to move a person from not wanting to buy to
becoming a customer. Make these sessions mandatory.

3. Hold monthly sales meetings as a group and one-on-one with each representative.
Discuss their metric numbers versus their production, and work on any weaknesses you
perceive in their sales approach. Keep notes of each meeting for future reference.

4. Introduce a product training schedule that includes training on your products and your
competitor's products as well. Make the trainings as comprehensive as possible and
mandatory for all representatives.

5. Schedule time for each representative to spend with the product development and
engineering staff. It is one thing to learn about the products in a classroom and an entirely
different thing to see the products being developed and built.

Case: Accenture
Accenture helps banks ensure that the sales function plays its role in growth initiatives and
contributes to high performance.

Effective human performance is essential for business success. Customer relationship

management disappointments can largely be explained by failing to ensure that an organization's
people are ready and able to take advantage of current insights and technology.
 Accenture's sales force effectiveness program ensures that an organization's people are ready and
able to take advantage of customer insight and technology to drive profitable sales and improve
customer retention.

Accenture has developed the sales force effectiveness program to enable companies to align
sales and marketing, manage sales force behavior and leverage exceptional sales capabilities.
These offerings provide employees with the insights, tools, training and incentives required to
drive profitable sales and kick start the journey toward high performance.

Accenture's approach:

 Increases the sales force's ability to deepen customer relationships. 

 Enables employees to focus on the right sales. 

 Reduces the time-to-competence period, so that new employees begin producing revenue
faster. 

 Improves workforce productivity and revenue contribution per employee. 

 Improves the retention of key talent and skills.

 Increases customer satisfaction.

Custom B2B Telemarketing and Lead Generation Case Study Vertical Market -
Financial Services

Introduction:

Client’s sales force, organized into three layers based on geographic area and prospect revenues,
was expected to generate and pursue their own leads. Leads generated as a result of divisional
marketing programs (website, tradeshows, advertising) were passed onto the sales force via
email and not managed through a central sales database or tracking system. Primary issues
needing to be addressed:

1. Sales Force lack of motivation to do cold calling and inbound lead qualification, causing
missed opportunity and no future sales opportunity pipeline development
2. Inability to track and manage sales force productivity with existing processes and
technology
3. Inconsistent self-reporting by the Sales Force caused limited understanding of their close
rates, benchmarks for productivity and sales cycle compliance
 4. Missed opportunity to capture “live” market data on sources of the best leads, insight into
the competition and prospect “wants and needs” across markets caused by inconsistent
self-reporting by the Sales Force.

Engagement:

A pilot project with Sales Support was defined to do lead generation, qualification, and
appointment setting; capture market and marketing program effectiveness data; implement
technology and processes to track sales force effectiveness; and to build a sales opportunity
pipeline. The results expected ranged from increased sales and revenue to enhanced Sales Force
productivity and morale.

Elements of the project included:

1. 1. Outbound cold calling to generate leads and appointments for the Sales Force
2. Joint development of qualifying criteria, information to be captured, and sales force
compliance requirements
3. Integration with company marketing programs to follow-up and qualify inbound inquiries
4. Automated outbound and inbound lead distribution and notification to the sales force
5. Online, web-based reporting across all aspects of the project, its progress, and statistics
6. Updating the client’s prospect data base with up to date business and contact information
7. Appointment setting through shared calendars to minimize the need to reschedule
8. Full reporting of Sales force compliance, lead distribution and appointments set

Results and Impact:

eti Sales Support produced extraordinary results and were contracted for a multi-year contract for
30,000+ hours of calling annually supporting the Client’s Business to Business sales force.

Results:

1. $400 of revenue generated for every $1 of project cost

2. Over $1B in total annual revenue potential identified
3. 1 in 5 qualified leads resulted in a sale
4. Estimated hours invested/appointment and cost/appointment went down by 15%-18%
5. Metrics and benchmarks were established for sales productivity and the sales cycle itself
6. Sales Force employee satisfaction and lead quality improved quarter after quarter
7. Comprehensive compliance management and measurement process ensured every
opportunity was handled appropriately and a sales opportunity pipeline was built
During the next calendar year, the 25-30% increase in annual hours, resulted in 45-50% increase
in qualified leads due to Sales Support staff’s acquired skills and knowledge of the client’s
products and services.

Client Reaction:

“…we learned more about our market penetration and position in 6 months than we did in over
30 years of doing business.” ‘All project objectives were met or exceeded. The smooth
integration of sales and marketing with disciplined lead management had resulted in not only
increased sales and sales productivity, but also provided total control over the customer
acquisition process.’