Insure your Sales Operations from Slippages and Revenue Loss

LONDON - March 24, 2014 - PRLog -- Let’s understand the concept and Advance’s propositions which has helped companies like Vodafone, Xerox, IBM, Lufthansa and many more.

Insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, damage or uncertain loss. Advance (UK) firmly believes, the best way of damage control is to avoid the damage itself!

What do you mean by sales operation?

Well, as per definition: ‘Sales operations are a set of business activities and processes that help a sales organization run effectively, efficiently and in support of business strategies and objectives. Sales operations may also be referred to as sales, sales support or business operations.’

The set of sales operations activities vary from company to company but often include these nine categories:

1. Sales strategy: design, planning, execution
2. Measurement of results: reporting, analytics & sales data
3. Compensation, sales targets, policies
4. Technology & tools, including CRM
5. Training & sales communication
6. Sales territory design & optimisation
7. Incentives
8. Lead generation/sales campaigns
9. Customer segmentation

Sales Operations can do the balancing act between strategy and execution from the annual, quarterly and monthly planning and analysis to the day-to-day support of the sales force – all the while enabling the front line salespeople to meet and exceed their sales and margin quotas.

How can Advance help you in ‘derisking’ the uncertainties of your Sales Operation?

Here are four ways in which Advance sales operation management can be the sales productivity accelerators for your organisation:

1. Identify the Focus based on the Goal: What is the company’s goal for the period – is it top line growth or bottom line growth? The Advance team can work closer to field-facing sales in times when top-line growth is the highest priority or work closer to internal organization-facing operations in times when bottom-line growth is the highest priority.

2. Provide Knowledge out of the Data: With all the CRM and Social Media tools and technology available to sales today, data collection is not a problem (if you have solved the technology problem that is – Enterprise resource projects are notorious for their low success rates for achieving the intended outcomes – another area where sales operations can support sales leadership in the selection of the right tools, in getting them to perform the way they should and in increasing tool usage and acceptability within sales teams along with ensuring data quality). Advance will help you in extraction of the right set of data, comparing it against trends and benchmarks and providing recommendations to the Sales leaders to help them decide the strategic direction.

3. Process Setting and Ownership:  An effective sales process can go a long way in improving the win rate and increasing the repeat sales. A sales process is effective when it balances the needs of three stakeholders – the needs of the customer, the needs of sales person to meet his/her numbers and the needs of the rest of the organization to be able to execute on the sale. The Advance team can not only help in the creation of the process but also take ownership of its documentation, adoption and implementation.

4. Metrics and Dashboards: One of my favourite topics and pet projects. Metrics need to be aligned to business strategy and objectives – metrics should not only measure the past performance but also act as leading indicators into the future and how it is developing over time. The selection of the right metrics (out of the many sales metrics that are used today) for the sales dashboards also depends on the audience. The Advance team can model the data and propose the right sales metrics to the sales team and sales leaders based on what insights they need to meet and exceed their performance objectives.

Benefits from Advance Sales Process Management:

1. Advance gives you a common language that sets the rules and standards that salespeople need to operate to. These are not vague, “it depends on the person” rules. These are agreed between the manager and the salespeople – but set by the manager.

2. Advance sales process gives you simple and powerful reporting that tells the salesperson and the manager how close they are to hitting the target based on NUMBERS and DATES and not based on opinion, hope or conversation. The Advance process applies a very high standard for determining “what is a prospect” and it’s this high standard that leads to daily – and physical - behavioural change.

3. Advance sales process gives you the practical tools for planning and executing sales - tools that MUST be used in order to consistently deliver the results. Selling is a practical art; the salesperson needs to use certain tools to do it. (Conventional wisdom has it that the “right salesperson” will do it anyway. Interestingly, the “right” salespeople instinctively use these tools.)

4. And finally, Advance sales process gets the salespeople to “self check”. It provides a framework for the salesperson to benchmark their performance against key outcomes and leads to small, but significant, daily, weekly and monthly adjustments in activity and skills that leads to stronger pipelines and more consistent results. In a real sales system, the salesperson actually develops into a much stronger performer, with credibility and standing in their marketplace.

Contact Details:
Advance Selling Skills Academy Limited
Website: http://www.as-sa.co.uk/
Email: customerservices@advancetm.com
Telephone: 0845 125 9098 (UK)
Telephone: +91 79 40057788(India)