Growth Stagnating with No Sales Organization in Place

Situation: A custom manufacturer of Check Valves wanted to grow their business and wanted help designing a compensation plan for an outside rep.

Solution: We helped them to take a closer look at their customers and their sales cycle and determined it would be more cost effective to hire inside sales people instead. After looking at their business model and customer base, we worked with them to develop a Competitive Business Strategy that included defining sales roles, marketing ROI, compensation plans, product pricing, sales recruiting and training, CRM processes and more.

Because there was a need to increase international business, we helped them recruit and train “inside” sales people who worked offsite on the east coast. This was the first time the company had gone “outside the building” with employees. Being on the east coast allowed the sales people to capture 60-70% of the European day and communicate with many new customers.

Results: As with many businesses their size, a small number of large customers made up a disproportionate percentage of their revenue. We implemented a pricing strategy that created a “sweet spot” of profitable customers and formed the basis for much of their marketing efforts. Profitability was dramatically increased across the board and even when one of the large customers departed, that revenue was replaced much higher profit dollars.

Sales Partners Coasting

Situation: A manufacturer in the Boating Industry was struggling with finding a way to get more business out of their Sales Partners across the US. They felt their partners were not motivated to sell their products.

Solution: We immediately canvassed the entire Sales Partner network to get their take on the situation and their relationship with the manufacturer. These Partners had been assigned protected sales territories, but they were in many cases order takers and not working their territory to generate new business. To compound what we considered a fairly significant problem, sales people were not permitted to sell into these protected territories. Some Sales Partners were like a Jack of all trades and only selling the company’s products if someone came to them and asked for it. Others were selling but had limited resources or were happy with the status quo. (This is a common problem with companies that have a distributor/dealer/partner channel. These relationships often start with the wrong strategy in place, despite good intentions, and only get worse with time.)

It was clear money was being left on the table just from their lack of sales acumen or interest. We evaluated historic sales data along with external data points indicating the number of potential customers across the US. With this information we created new sales territories and assigned minimum quotas which the Sales Partners needed to reach or exceed in order to retain their status as a Sales Partner. Since the company also had their own sales people we created a model whereby they could sell into the formerly protected partner territories but provide a commission for the partner and required them to participate in the transaction as well. This was a force multiplier for the partners who in many cases had few if any dedicated sales people besides the owner or manager.

The original ordering process the Sales Partners were under kept valuable customer information in the hands of the Sales Partners and the company never knew who many of their customers were. We changed this by requiring all transactions be conducted through the company in terms of payment and customer details. Sales Partners were compensated in the form of commissions on sales they brought in as well as on sales the company’s salespeople sold in their territory.

Results: Sales Partners were no longer complacent, and those who were got replaced by another who was more proactive and willing to go out and sell. The new sales model also eliminated channel conflict since Sales Partners and company salespeople were compensated when they sold into the territory. It also added hundreds of end customer names and contact details into the company CRM which also facilitated greater reach in their e-marketing campaigns.

No Skin in the Game

Situation: A Commercial Printer wanted to increase sales and knew they needed sales people but their last attempt at putting together a sales team had fizzled. It turned out that they had attempted to reassign Customer Service people into Sales roles.

Solution: We immediately conducted a sampling of their customer base to understand how their customers buy and how they perceived their commercial partners. This included both high and low end customers. This approach provided us with more valuable information than had been obtained previously through the client’s attempts at customer surveys and feedback. Many customers were not aware of the company’s full product offerings and one call sparked a conversation that lead to a new sale of product the customer had previously been told was not available. It had since been added to the product line but no one had reached out to let them know.

There was no formal sales organization in place, simply order takers in the form of Customer Service personnel. (Many businesses refer to this arrangement as “sales”. It is not.) At one time they had made an attempt at creating a sales team but that was short lived due to lack of focus, leadership and strategy. We created a sales process that was mapped to their customers purchasing cycle and identified new sales roles that we helped recruit and train. In addition we transitioned them from an under utilized CRM system that was more of a customer support database than sales tool to a sales focused CRM strategy with specific measurements and forecasts.

This client had a competent customer service department in place, however, much of their processes were paper based and management was too focused on individuals’ use of time instead of customer service’s impact on the customer relationship. We removed their paper and created a customer support process that placed the highest value on solving problems. We also trained them to capture key customer data such as new and updated email addresses, roles and titles that would directly benefit marketing efforts.

Based on all of the above, we customized and integrated a CRM tool and trained all sales and customer service reps in its use.

Results: Company is now a proactive, sales driven company with an effective sales strategy and the right people, systems and processes in place to grow.

Overpaying Underperformers

Situation: A manufacturer of Industrial Vacuums felt they were overpaying some sales people who were coasting. We evaluated the situation and determined they were really rewarding geographic territories and not their sales people. Those who had good territories made lots of commissions and those without, not so much.

Solution: In order to get a better handle on the sales territory potential we sourced external market data that showed how many of their “target customer” plants or facilities were in each of their industry verticals and where they were geographically. Matching some of these customer locations with existing paying customers we were able to establish the potential value of a sale into each different industry vertical.

Next we overlaid this information along with the target customer count by vertical in mapping software and were able to visualize the disparity between their current situation and the market potential. There were large sections of territories, coincidentally the furthest from the sales reps home base that appeared under served. We showed there was great potential but they had little to no sales in those geographies.

Armed with real figures on plant locations, and their specific industries we reorganized the sales territories into more equal sized potential and geographies and established new sales quotas in line with the market potential. In some cases territories that were handled by one individual were broken up into two and a new sales resource hired to pursue that potential business.

As we were working on territory realignment, we updated the sales process to reflect current market realities and integrated this into their existing sales force automation software. This included discontinuing time consuming activity reports and replacing them with a true pipeline forecast.

Results: A newly invigorated sales force focused on getting the most out of their respective sales territories. In addition, management had a strong grasp on what level of performance should be expected and demanded from each territory.

Next Steps: Updating compensation strategy to reward fairly and effectively across all territories.