Why do these problems persist? Let's use an analogy.

Your managers are inside their office. People smell something is burning in the business. They can't agree what it is. Some say it smells like wood. Others say it smells like plastic. A few say it's coming from outside the building. Some report seeing smoke, others see nothing at all or waste time arguing that the business is fireproof. It's not always possible to see the cause of a fire from a single room. It's even harder to put a fire out from the inside the house. You need experts on the outside to identify the hot spots, direct the water and save the building.

The truth is, most attempts to improve the sales and marketing functions of a company fail because they are directed too low in the organization where people have limited vision, insufficient experience and restricted budget. The people in charge of change aren't always empowered with real authority, and they don't always stay in the role long enough to see it through. Add people's general reluctance to change, and the politics of protecting their own reputations.

It's not hard to see why sales improvement projects are launched and money gets spent on solutions that offer a veneer of short-term change, but fail to fundamentally fix underlying problems.

A key reason is the systems, rules, tools and metrics that run your salesforce have been cobbled together over time, by different people, in different years, and not assembled to a master blueprint.

In addition, most people who lead sales teams or the sales enablement and training roles may be former salespeople; so if everything they know about selling comes from working inside a flawed system, how do they bring new experience to the table?

The reverse is also true. If the person deciding how to improve your sales results has never personally carried a quota but instead has an academic or mathematical understanding of selling, how do they bring context and situational knowledge to the table?

Volatility and Unpredictability

Despite the rigor you apply elsewhere in the company, calculations turn elastic when it comes to the salesforce. Revenue can be far less than expected when salespeople highball their original forecast, then give away discounts at the finish line.

Income hits peaks & valleys when prospecting, nurturing and closing are not in balance, or when the pipeline is stacked unevenly. Since salespeople are targeted on the top line instead of the bottom line, the true cost of sale (and therefore your rate of return on the salesforce) is seldom known.

When close dates are pushed back (with a corresponding increase in the cost of sale), or when fees are reduced to beat a  competitor (with a matching decrease in profit), sales managers rarely re-evaluate if pursuing the deal still makes sense, or if it makes better business sense for their salesperson to withdraw.

You try to make sense of the forecast by applying the law of averages in CRM or spreadsheets. But you still resort to manual weightings and revisions to massage the numbers. It’s not a precise science. But you wish it was.

As a result, Sales has the reputation of being a ‘dark art’. Sometimes this phrase is used by the very people tasked with leading the Sales function - and with good cause. Recent benchmarks of global sales performance reveal sobering statistics every CEO, COO and CFO should consider:

• Three quarters of salespeople achieve less than 80% of their annual revenue target.

• 61% of opportunities in the sales pipeline end in a ‘lost sale’ or ‘no decision’.

• The resource cost of pursuing a solution sale that takes 3 months to close is around $50,000—win or lose.

• 63% of salespeople don't move customers to the next step, or ask for the order.

• 73% of sales managers avoid giving any formal skills coaching to their team members.

• Too many executives see sales effectiveness as a cost to be avoided, not as a mission-critical function.

Imagine how analysts & shareholders would react to such systems failures if they knew to look for them. We propose that greater transparency about value creation in the sales operation should be the next evolution on your corporate reporting agenda.

The SalesLabs proposition is to serve as a fresh pair of eyes into your organization, and design a bespoke program of change and monitoring to lift your top line predictably, sustainably and measurably. This will provide:

• An holistic picture of whether your sales process, procedures and tools are fit for purpose, or lagging behind.

• Insight into which salespeople can actually sell your products and services, who can't, and what to do about it.

• Clarity on which sales managers are tactical vs. strategic, adding value or creating risk, and what to do about it.

• A roadmap of improvement options ranked by speed, risk, impact, and ease.

• We can also roll up our sleeves and embed with your team to effect change from the inside.

Call to Action

Our 21st-century analytics, thought leadership and three decades of enterprise sales leadership experience will help you improve the design, measurement and scalability of your sales organization. Every engagement is bespoke and confidential. Since 1997 our approach has helped clients build better sales ecosystems, which have won more than $50bn in revenue upside as a direct result of our work with them.

We're the only sales training firm trusted by Edward Elgar Publishing to compile the new Encyclopedia of Sales and Sales Management, as the first step towards introducing a global set of standards and qualification for the sales profession. If you choose to engage us, your company will have instant access to the world's leading think-tank on professional selling.

Engage SalesLabs to audit your sales force over the next quarter. We will return to you a clear roadmap to steady, profitable and sustainable improvement. Our approach is unique. It's evidence-based. It works. And we guarantee it.