Today’s selling environment is more difficult than an uphill struggle; it is, instead, akin to running up a descending escalator, says CSO Insights, which released its latest report,
Running Up the Down Escalator: 2017 CSO Insights World-Class Sales Practices Report on August 31.
For this report, CSO Insights interviewed more than 1,300 respondents across a range of industries, geographies, sales roles and company types.
“Data uncovered in this report is relevant to anyone who makes or influences decisions about sales strategy or who needs to understand the factors that go into making such decisions,” said Seleste Lunsford, senior director of CSO Insights.
The number of salespeople making their quotas has decreased from 63% in 2012 to 53% in 2016. More informed and demanding buyers, economic and political uncertainty and new disruptive technologies have rendered traditional sales methods ineffective at worst and inadequate at best.
Far from being removed from frontline revenue generators, HR can actually have a significant impact on lifting the sales performance of employees. Indeed, the good news is that sales teams within companies can adopt a strategic and intentional approach, through learning and development initiatives, to improve their success rate. All these skills can be taught, applied and measured.
CSO Insights found that an intersection of customer relationship level and sales processes level predicted sales success. Under the category of ‘relationship’, a company can be an approved vendor, preferred supplier, solutions consultant, strategic contributor or trusted partner. ‘Sales processes’, meanwhile, can be random, informal, formal or dynamic.
Six of the 12 practices drive relationship levels, with the balance driving the sales process. Here are the 12 practices:
- Articulating solutions aligned to customers’ needs
- Delivering a consistent customer experience
- Assessing why top performers are successful
- Determining the reason for losing a salesperson
- Collecting and sharing best practices across the organization
- Holding sales managers accountable for their teams’ use of resources
- Communicating appropriate value messages
- Supporting continuous development of the people,
- Developing and ensuring implementation of performance improvement plans
- Having positive interactions in all channels
- Surfacing reasons why customers stop doing business; and
- Selling value to avoid discounting or gaining comparative value in return for price concessions.
World-class performers – those who figured in the upper right of the Sales Relationship Process (SRP) Matrix, and who comprised just 6.9% of the respondents -- said they adopted at least 10 of the 12 practices in their organisations.
CSO Insights is the independent sales research arm of the Miller Heiman Group, an organisation which seeks to improve the performance and productivity of B2B sales teams.
