Randall Isaac, CEO of Bluetide Management is my guest blogger today.  I’ve known Randall for a year and a half and his company specializes in unearthing data hidden in CRM that affects decision making and bottom lines.

Sales process makes a dramatic improvement on revenue performance, yet the majority of sales managers don’t use it effectively.

I am an unabashed fan of CSO Insights’ annual poll of sales executives. As opposed to research from many top analyst firms that is so academic I wonder if any of them have ever carried a sales bag, the survey data from CSO makes want to scream ‘right on – finally real sales challenges are being talked about’! 

Here is some selected data from their latest survey of 1,800 senior sales managers; 

• 89% of sales managers feel sales process provides real positive impact to sales results 
• But 60% of sales managers don’t use sales process 
• Formally managing sales process makes a huge difference; managers who formally manage vs. those who ‘informally’ manage report 5% higher win rates. 
• CSO pegs the incremental revenue associated with this better win rate at an astonishing $2.25M per year, per 20 rep team. 
• Now the clunker: only 15% of sales managers say that their CRM provides impact to revenue results. 

I’d like to offer my opinion on how this data all ties together. 

What is Sales Process?

The Wikipedia definition of sales process 

“A sales process is a systematic approach for performing product or service sales. The reasons for having a sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction in sales, and scalable revenue generation. 

Specific steps or stages in a sales process vary from company to company but generally include the following steps: 

1. Sales Universe 
2. Sales lead 
3. Qualified prospect 
4. Need identification 
5. Proposal 
6. Closing 
7. Deal Transaction 

From a seller’s point of view, a sales process mediates risk by stage-gating deals based on collection of information or execution of procedures that gate movement to the next step.” 

Why are so few managers formally using Sales Process? 

The last line of the definition is about information that sales reps collect at each sales stage and the procedures that they engage in to move opportunities forward is what sales people do every day. The Role of a manager is to bring that activity in line with sales process. CSO Insights found that there is a dramatic difference in sales performance based on how a manager achieves this; formally and regular reinforcement drives far better performance than simply informally talking about it. 

The naysayers will say “CRM captures sales activity in the form of Tasks and Events (for those not familiar, think MSFT Outlook’s Task and Calendar features for sales people), so what’s the problem?” 

Well, here’s where the whole system breaks down. The role of a sales manager is defined by huge pressure, lots of hours away from family travelling, and too much to do in too little time. They do not have time to click around the CRM to try to find their reps’ activity information. A fly on the wall of any sales forecast review meeting taking place right now anywhere in the world will very likely observe a sales manager inspecting and guiding sales activity with their sales reps verbally. In other words, CRM is not participating in the fundamental sales manager function of managing the team’s sales activity! Voila – millions of sales dollars are being dropped…because of too many clicks! 

The solution is for CRM to think like a manager 

The dilemma is that once a company has realized success and is going down a certain path, it’s really hard to change. Salesfore.com has gone through exponential growth and has a wide diversity of customers. Whenever they add a feature it’s really important to satisfy the widest possible audience. That must make it hard to bring it all down to solve a specific business problem for a specific user role. 

Sit in a forecast review meeting, watch and listen to the dialogue and things become very clear. CRM needs to support consolidation of information onto the user interface so that it flows with the meeting; 

1. The rep walks in the room; show that reps revenue forecast 
2. The manager and rep start drilling into opportunity status; show the high level details of the opportunity, revenue, company, contacts, products, stage, etc 
3. The manager wonders if the reps’ activity lines up with proper sales process: show the task activity associated with the opp. Ie., formally manage process 
4. The manager wants to guide the rep back in alignment with sales; enable on the spot task creation and editing so the manager doesn’t have to wonder if the rep has captured the guidance. 

The point is that these are all actions that CRM already supports, but doesn’t present. A little user interface design can save a ton of clicks..and turn them into millions of dollars! 

You can find out more about Bluetde Management at their website.  http://bluetidemanagement.com  Their flagship product, Sales Clarity gives you a whole new realtime view of the data buried in your CRM.