Integrated Sales Process Management
A methodology for improving sales effectiveness in the 21st Century
by
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The Basics of Sales Management
Three Levels of Sales Management
There are basically three levels of sales management:
- People management,
- Opportunity management, and
- Sales process management.
People management is about managing sales and support people. It includes such functions as recruiting, training, compensating, territory assignment, coaching, counseling and motivating people so that their goals and the company’s goals are achieved.
Some keys to effective people management are:
- Recruit only the best people. Don’t settle for the best of the worst.
- Train them thoroughly and often. Determine the talent requirements of the job, assess the talents of the people, determine the talent gaps, and then train to fill in the talents.
- Know their workload, e.g. daily hours, activity levels, time management.
- Coach and counsel, i.e. inspect what you expect and isolate problems.
- Conduct regular evaluations; say a formal evaluation once a year and quarterly informal evaluations.
- Keep people informed.
- Set challenging, but attainable, quotas.
- Have an effective sales compensation plan.
Opportunity management involves focus on individual sales opportunities, i.e. how to marshal the people and other resources of the organization to win a specific sale. Sales process management is the set of activities by which managers adopt a complete methodology for managing sales and inspecting adherence to that methodology. It involves keeping track of all sales opportunities being pursued by the sales organization. The set of all such opportunities and their state of development, i.e. how near are they to conclusion, is commonly referred to as the sales pipeline.
The keys to having an effective selling process are
- Commitment from the top
- Good structure
- Clearly defined steps (performance standards)
- Effective sales tools
- Effective qualifying
- Timely management visibility, via regular reporting that doesn’t burden sales people.
The major focus of this book is sales process management because it is only through success here can true and lasting sales effectiveness be achieved. The sales processes introduced are quite comprehensive. Opportunitymanagement should be the focus of salespeople. It should not be a key activity of sales managers. When sales managers get heavily involved in opportunities, they have usually reached a level of desperation.
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About the Book
Selling is getting more and more complex, yet few companies are implementing formal sales processes that would bring the degree of management control that is needed. Too many managers have no reliable way to measure the performance of sales people other than by orders produced and bulging 30-60-90 day forecasts with little or no backup.
There is pressure to adopt sales automation, but there isn't much evidence of its improving sales effectiveness. The decision is not a simple one, successful implementation is even harder.
If you want to improve your competitiveness you may need to change the behavior of your salespeople by focusing on the processes that run the business. You can’t change the behavior without changing the processes and inspecting that they are being followed.
The book guides the reader to building an integrated system of sales and marketing management processes. But this itself will not bring the desired level of effectiveness. You must also manage the interaction among the management processes and in so doing seamlessly integrate the product marketing strategy, the sales and marketing tactics, and the sales and marketing management processes.
This is neither a text book nor a book on sales management theory. It is a step-by-step, here’s-how-to-do-it, guide to achieving integrated sales process management. It evolved to its current state, not as an academic activity but from years of empirical evidence of what works and what doesn’t.
In a global business environment where everyone is working hard to achieve a unique edge, understanding and improving your management processes faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
This book introduces Integrated Sales Process Management to people who are, or aspire to be, marketing and sales executives and provides them with a direction to achieving the concepts in their own organizations.
The central theme in the book is that if you want to solve sales effectiveness problems permanently, or prevent them from occurring, you must become more management process driven.
About the Author
Michael Lodato has spent the last 40 years in virtually every facet of sales, marketing and strategic management, and has worked as president and other executive positions at several high technology companies. In 2005 he retired as Executive-in-Residence and Associate Professor of Marketing and Sales Management at the California Lutheran University where he taught in the MBA and undergraduate programs.
Since 1979, he has been President of MWL & Company – an international consulting practice that works with clients to implement structured processes for sales management, strategic management and product marketing management.
Dr. Lodato helps in formulating business plans and marketing strategy employing the Agile Strategic Management methodology he developed. The methodology is documented in a new book: A Handbook for Managing Strategic Processes, Becoming Agile in a World of Changing Realities, (available in 2014). He also authored:
- Integrated Sales Process Management, a methodology for improving sales effectiveness in the 21st Century
- Selling Big Ticket Items: The MASTER Method, that focuses on personal selling
- Management of New Product Launches and Other Marketing Projects
All of these are available from the publisher’s web site www.authorhouse.com and at local and on-line booksellers such as Amazon, and Barnes and Noble
In 1984 he self-published, Selling Computers and Software: the MASTER Method. He has also written scores of articles, booklets, white papers, methodologies and training materials. Information on these can be found on Dr. Lodato’s web site www.theprocessplace.com.
Michael is the developer of:
Integrated Sales Process Management,
Agile Strategic Management Process,
Integrated Territory Management,
Integrated Channel Management and
The MASTER Method of Selling,
all five of which have been installed in companies in the U.S. and Europe.
Dr. Lodato has been a speaker at conferences, conventions and private groups, discussing strategy formulation, sales productivity improvement and marketing. He worked as contributing editor on four computer industry publications and was a member of the Program Committee of the COMDEX conferences.
Michael is an avid golfer with degrees from Colgate (BS), Rochester (MS) and Rutgers (Ph.D.).