How to Improve Sales Revenue in Your Company | Stephen Wise A typical business goal is to execute the sales strategy and increase revenue by X% over the period. The sales process is an ongoing operational activity and is usually not suited to being treated like a formal project. However, the sales process needs to be managed and there are similarities between managing a sales process and managing a project. A sales process needs: Management of key milestones and timing Identification and assignment of people to assist Encouragement of teamwork at client site and internally Risk identification and mitigation planning Tracking and reporting of selected metrics Feedback/improvement loop Management of key milestones and timing in the sales process I recommend every sales team to work with an expert project manager to develop a template of tasks and estimated timing which gets stored in a central library. At the earliest reasonable time, the template should be fired-up and customised to suit the opportunity. That is, tailor it to needs by modifying the tasks that need to be accomplished, the estimated durations, and dependencies. This plan, will guide all stakeholders to manage expectations and keep everyone on track for what needs to happen next. Identification and assignment of resources within the organization to assist with the presentation Once an opportunity has been identified, team members need to be called on for assistance in various parts of the proposal. It is important that the sales person ensure that everyone has time to take on the work, understands how to do the work, and understands when and how to report that the work is completed or that some sort of issue has caused work to slow down or stop. The sales person may not have the authority to prioritise everyone’s time and therefore it is important to keep the lines of communication open. Risk identification and mitigation planning Sales people are able to identify unique risks because they are the closest to understanding the client’s expressed needs. These insights are extremely relevant. Combined with their own experience dealing with other customers, sales people can see risks that no one else can. Positive risks, those that have upside potential lead to new items in the sales funnel. Negative risks, those that can push a deal off the rails should not be pushed under the carpet. The (negative) risks, should be identified and reviewed. Each risk has a likelihood/ probability of occurring and severity/impact on the sale should it occur. The sales person’s team and management should periodically develop and review tactics to reduce the probability and lesson the severity of impact, should it occur. Tracking and reporting of selected metrics back to the team and management Peter Drucker, has been paraphrased, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. The selection of appropriate measures and metrics is a cornerstone of sales management. Most sales people are keenly aware at all times of the status of their metrics and how much they are exceeded or failing short of their objectives. In addition to short-term results, frequently communicating a sales dashboard may be more beneficial then you thought. The benefit is to improve organizational alignment with the sales strategy. Having visibility to the sales dashboard could be the trigger to makes those changes Feedback/improvement loop Deals get won. Deals get lost. The salesperson will obtain lots of knowledge about the client or at least they should. Knowledge represents a significant asset for most businesses. Left unmanaged knowledge tends to quickly fade. When deals are lost, it is important to learn from the process. Are there changes that can be made to the sales process? A lessons learned process and central repository for the post-mortem will help the next sales rep and also help when it comes time to review the process for a complete over hall or investment in technology to automate parts of the process. Stephen D Wise Stephen Wise Integration Professionals Dramatically Improve Traction June 19, 2019 By SuperUser Account Leadership, Measurement sales 0 Comment Read More >>
$1 B Annualized Cost Savings from United Technologies Merger | Stephen Wise United Technologies has proposed a merger and acquisition of Raytheon for a combined company valued at more than $100 billion. The architects of the deal have analyzed the strategic rationale. One of the quantified success metrics they announced is synergy of economies of scale leading eventually to $1 billion in annual cost savings. Unfortunately, deal track records are not so good. According to The Art of M&A (Reed, Lajoux, and Nesvold), 55% of all mergers fail to deliver on the financial promise announced when the merger was initiated. Why do 55% of all mergers fail to deliver? Most assume that ensuring the deal success is the domain of the advisors, accountants, lawyers, and bankers. However, once the deal closes, management is left to deliver on the expectations and promises. I am convinced that the single biggest factor of merger failures is the lack-of a CEO sponsored Integration Program lead by a Project Manager. Why is that? Most post-merger activities run behind schedule. I believe a root cause is managers are assigned many of the activities as “business-as-usual” (BAU) work. Managers already have a day job and reporting structure so management of the resourcing, risks, issues, and decision making that was present during the pre-close phase has largely evaporated. There is a high-level of uncertainty on any project and M&A is no different. It is critical that the leadership team responsible for crafting the deal remain involved. The teams responsible for progress and benefits delivery can get easily mired in firefighting and in-fighting. Sometimes this can be blamed on “culture-clash” but regardless of the label it is up to leadership to quickly identify and make key decisions for the team. How do I fix that? A Project Manager will assure there is a process to engage, manage and communicate to stakeholders the changes to the timeline, unresolved issues, new risks, and most important, ensure timely decision making. In the case of the new Raytheon Technologies, the advisors, accountants, lawyers, and bankers have put together an impressive transaction overview. You can check out the announcement package here. Hopefully, in coming days we will also see demonstration of a strong Project Manager working closely with the CEO to successfully deliver on the annualized benefits everyone is so excited about. Stephen Wise Integration Professionals Dramatically Improve Traction https://www.IntegrationProfessionals.com June 10, 2019 By SuperUser Account Mergers Merger 0 Comment Read More >>