• search for new clients,
• maintain relations with existing clients.

It is like a rule, ‘the must’.

It is widely accepted the salesman is in charge of both finding new customers and keeping relations with them. Let’s say, he/she does selling and accounting.

How did this rule come into B2B environment?

• Someday someone said the customer is pretty happy to have one particular contact.  We love our customer so much and thus in order to meet this requirement anchored by someone someday, we dedicate a person (salesman in particular) who is now a single contact for the customer.
• Futhermore, a salesman did a great job to deal with the customer so it’s natural that salesman now deserves the award – ability to up-sell the customer in the future! In other words, you, salesman, have worked hard to make a deal so now it’s time to compensate your efforts with easy job – additional sales for the happy customer!
• Moreover, a salesman promised a lot while making a deal and it’s up to him to ensure all promises will be kept in the delivery stage or during all contract time. “This is my customer and I won’t allow anyone to put my reputation at risk!”

Now when historical reasons of inertia are clear, let’s agree on the problem that comes out of all this mentioned above. Oh, yes – no time for salesman to do sales!

Well, accounting is necessary part of money generation process and should be assured. But why is this job done by people who have specific skills – getting into contact with unfamiliar people, raising trust on the company and product?

When company enables its salesmen to sell & account, it’s only question of time when the salesman stops selling and keeps accounting only. If salesman sells well, he/she will fill up with customers very fast. What means, the better is salesman, the sooner company looses him.

And then what next? Oh, yeah, “we need new salesman!”. Someone who could go into dark wood for a very short period of time, just until he collects the necessary amount of customers to make his life bright. The hunter becomes a farmer despite there’re still many beasts in the wood.

What’s the solution?

It’s is obvious that sales and accounting are two completely different processes. Moreover, different skills are needed to lead them. When company merges those two activities into one piece, always new sales suffer. The symptom is noticeable when salesman says he has no time to sell. Just count how much this disability costs for your company.

When salesman has no time to sell originally appeared on Sales Processes and Actions on April 2, 2011.

Sales management is based on absolute common sense, there’s nothing mysterious or miraculous. If you read the following you would say it is obvious. We believe it is. That’s why it just must work.

There are the necessary conditions that need to be effectively arranged in any organization that sells to other business customers:

• Opportunities.  You sell the product/service/solution, but your customer buys the solution of his (business’) problem. Everybody knows it. But do your products/services/solutions disclose the value the customer gets if he signs the contract? Really?
• Customers. Selling to the wrong customers (i.e. who do not have the problem that is solved by your product/service/solution) is waste of time. Moreover, it demotivates the salespersons as they hit the wall too often. Are your potential customers ready to accept meetings requested by your salespersons? What should be done to make ‘no’ answers sound rarer? If you hanged up the phone if the caller offered to solve a problem you’ve just dealt with?
• Sales processes. A production manager knows what steps and tasks in what subsequence should be done in order to complete the product. And what about sales manager? Say, if some subsequence was effective (ended with sale), was it repeated to generate more sales in the same, once effective, way? Really?
• Sales people. You call them managers, but what do they manage? The outcome of the sales? Or the processes and the resources involved in them? Or the current customers? Do the measurements set stimulate your sales people to focus on new sales or they damn sales people to just managing accounts? It is widely supposed that division of work is impossible in the sales environment. So managing the resources (that are involved in generating new sales), managing schedules, supporting customers and selling itself is somehow the one inseparable autonomous process, that should be necessarily carried by the same person. Really?

Getting back to the question we started with: sales management solution has nothing to do with the magic. It is about overwhelming changes causing opportunities (products/services/solutions), customer segmentation, sales processes and the roles of people involved in sales.

Sales management solution: nothing miraculous originally appeared on Sales Processes and Actions on October 17, 2010.

As far as other companies write blogs about the industry, we will write about the company itself. Why one should be interested in that?

• Well, we know that when it comes to the signing the important contract, both B2B parties seek to assure if the future partner fully satisfies the expectations. At that moment nobody talks about the corporate image, the only question is if we be able to work together.
• Sales management field – focus of our consulting business – is full of myths that are impossible to deny in a few words (the  TOC community call those myths holy cows). Blog is an appropriate platform for step by step disclosure of those myths with no hurry.
• Finally, to encourage our potential customers to look for more detailed information (on sales management principles according to TOC) is one of steps in our own sales processes. If 1 of 10 CEOs, who will spend 15 minutes in this website, become partners with PrAction, this means our sales process is proceeding efficiently.

As far as there’re many blogs for the masses, let this one be for those few who have a headache because of weak sales.

Hello world! originally appeared on Sales Processes and Actions on September 23, 2010.