Assess

This phase is a health check to understand the extent to which sales competencies, lead quality, sales management coaching, tools, technology and processes are aligned and optimised to achieve your revenue growth goals. It provides clarity on what to preserve and what to change.

We begin by interviewing your sales managers and a cross-section of the sales and sales support teams to learn their views on how your company sells today, the workflows and procedures that are used, and where improvement can be found.

We validate what people have told us by spending time on the road with your salespeople, and scoring what we see against global performance benchmarks. At your discretion, we compare your internal voice with what current and past customers can reveal about their experience working with you - always revealing.

Our findings are turned into a straight-talking report that recommends a change roadmap to achieve improvement at a realistic pace in priority order. From here we mutually agree if we will engage further.

Install phase i1 (Systems)

We mutually agree what you want to use from the Report we produced in the Assess phase, and the pace of change your company is prepared to adopt. In doing this we agree some basic tenets for your sales process:

• What problem(s) you solve
• Where you find customers with this problem
• If the market size can sustain your revenue goals
• What your ideal customer looks like
• How Marketing should target & track demand creation
• Stages in your ideal customer's buying process
• Milestones that prove each stage is complete
• The ideal velocity for sales to move between stages
• Typical lead attrition between stages
• The format for lead nurturing programs
• Technology for marketing automation & lead scoring

• Tools to use when selling & reporting in each stage
• Who plays a role in each stage (presales, partners etc)
• A structure for forecasting based on win probability
• How to qualify-out of sales that show no progress
• What new sales hires should learn in induction
• What new sales managers should learn on promotion
• Using incentives to drive behaviours that drive sales
• Linking methodologies & tools to avoid duplication
• The format for opportunity & account reviews
• Technology for sales analysis & reporting

It may be the first time your organization has mapped this, or it might serve to improve legacy systems & processes you already have.

It's an important step because unless systems, tools & methodologies are designed to support your sales process, whatever training you do will have a shelf -ife of about six months, after which people will fall back into old habits.

The i1 stage is about change management, not training. It is your foundation for sustainability.

Install phase i2 (People)

With the organization's sales systems redesigned in the i1 phase, 'sales training' gains relevance as an enabler to help salespeople and managers excel in the new procedures.

We transfer new knowledge, tools and skills to the salesforce and other professionals who engage with them, using a combination of classroom workshops and mentoring to improve your sales managers ability to serve as custodians & coaches of the change process.

Early success is observed in people's reaction and learning in the classroom. By tracking the results in accounts and opportunities that your teams choose as live cases in our workshops, we calculate the impact on sales velocity and win ratios so you know the leading indicators of ROI in real-time while the "i2" stage is rolling out.

Throughout this stage we maintain close contact with executives, department heads, operations, HR and L&D.

Install phase i3 (Reinforcement)

With studies showing that 80% of new learning can be forgotten within 30 days without reinforcement, the i3 phase focuses on ensuring people in your business don't abandon what they have learned.

This is designed in collaboration with your training officers to produce a variety of interventions that remind staff of key concepts, show them how others are applying them, and the results being achieved. From posters to videos to podcasts to e-learning modules, a variety of approaches are available in the classroom, to wireless devices, or to the PC.

We continue to focus on helping Sales Managers master the art of sales coaching in the field, in sales meetings and in account reviews, to help them get closer to the sharp end of business.

Monitoring phase m1

The purpose of the Monitor phase is to observe how your managers, salespeople, partners and support teams adopt what they have been taught, and enhance the results they achieve.

We focus on two areas:

• We look for best practices that can be shared so everyone sells like your top 20%.
• We watch managers run coaching sessions, and advise on ways to transition from manager to coach to mentor.

A range of reports are available along the Kirkpatrick Scale to monitor Reaction at Level I, Learning at Level II, Adoption at Level III and Results at Level IV.

These reports serve as early warning systems to reveal where change isn't taking place. Executives use this to reality check the commitment of managers. Managers use this to learn what peers are doing differently that they can apply. HR professionals use this to manage the risk of the investment and give transparency to the process of change.

We produce quarterly reports for summit meetings with your heads of sales and HR to discuss improvement priorities. Step by step, with careful monitoring, your company will achieve significant progress.

Recording this progress is also a basis for awarding Sales Certification for teams and individuals.