| July 23, 2010
The sales-enabled organisation
*By Philip Belcher
WHY DO BUSINESSES continue to waste money on sales? All too often managers spend big money hiring industry-best sales people, train their existing sales people with leading-edge methods, and implement technology to automate sales when their company-wide sales-enabling processes are at best adequate and at worst non-existent.
I have regularly managed where a turnaround was needed to improve sales. In all of these situations the answer to improving sales and the bottom line of the business was not spending big money on sales. Simply, the problem was that it was not a sales-enabled organisation (SEnO).
The SEnO is one where all parts of the business run so that everything the company does enables sales to the customers, who are delighted to be dealing with a highly proficient extended sales team.
In the SEnO, everyone considers themselves in sales; it is the culture. Existing and potential customers can sense it no matter who they are dealing with in the organisation.
The sales-enabled organisation by function:
* Executive & board. The job of ensuring the organisation is sales-enabled begins with the board, the CEO, and the executive management team. To enable the organisation to provide service to customers that will make the company stand out from the competitors, the sales ethos must emanate from the board and the executive who are the owners of the company vision, mission, and values. The executive must send the sales signals by their actions, not just words.
* HR. The HR process must ensure that sales-enablement is included in all position descriptions, performance reviews, and where possible, reward systems.
* Finance and administration must ensure that customer interactions are dealt with in a sales-enabling fashion whilst protecting the owners' interests.
* Marketing must ensure that pricing, promotion, positioning, and products/services are seamlessly integrated into the sales effort with effective sales feedback loops.
* Support must form a seamless team with sales to ensure the customer sees a consistent approach from acquisition, to support, and on to repeat business.
* R&D is critical to providing products/services that are not just technically superior but are in line with the sales-enabled marketing/sales effort.
* Manufacturing excellence and close liaison with the marketing/sales effort are key differentiators that underpin sales-enablement.
* Operations and logistics are pivotal to the customer being delighted with on-time, in-full delivery. Sales-enabling this aspect pays handsome dividends.
* Sales people must be highly trained, understand the entire value chain, and see themselves as customer advocates as well as company representatives.
Spending money and focusing on the sales department is only part of the answer to improving sales. The long term winners are sales-enabled organisations that have customer value creating sales as a key part of their culture and every facet of the operation actively championed from the board down.
*Philip Belcher is CEO of LSE Consulting
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