Building a Predictable Scalable Sales Organization

 

“Why did you start this business?”, a question that was posed to me during one entrepreneurship panel discussion. For a second I was silent, not because I did not have the answer, but because it was a throwback of 10 years in memories. Then it took me back to the present day trying to understand how the market understanding has evolved in this context, the sales profession.

I always believed in sales, and the selling profession. I always believed like most of us, that selling is vital for the success of any business. But unfortunately, sales continued to be one of the most poorly understood and under optimized areas of business.

“When I went to Harvard Business School to study for MBA, I expected that sales would be part of the curriculum. In fact the subject is absent from most MBA programs as well as undergraduate programs too.” This what Philip Delves, author of bestseller “what they teach you at Harvard Business School”, described in his book. He continues, “when I asked one of our Harvard professor to explain why, I was told that if I really wanted to study sales, I could pay for a two-week evening course somewhere, but no one was suggesting we go and learn strategy at night school.

Selling continue to be an orphan in business academe. Until this day it is of no excuse why sales profession continues to be undermined and overwhelmed with myths.

We always hear the saying “Good salespeople are born with natural instincts and can not be made”
OR

If only I can hire better salespeople, I’ll have the best sales organization.
Thus, most managements still believe that the best way to drive revenue growth is striving to hire more salespeople while crossing fingers they will be lucky in hiring good salespeople, or in best shape they work on a better compensation plan, and provide the sales team with more sales training sessions and product knowledge. But as much as hiring good salespeople is becoming more complicated, management are reaching less promising results and thus entering a non-ending loop in solving their challenges.

The Solution: Science into Sales

I always believe that you can not fix a problem in the same mindset the problem was created. Thus we believe that such growth begins by a paradigm shift in the mindset and start focusing on the sales organization part, building governance and fundamentals that caters to all performers rather directing the efforts on hiring and selection process. Hiring will eventually follow.

That’s why I always refer to the case study of Mark Roberge and his experience as VP of Sales @ Hubspot especially that he come from none sales and sales management experience. He relied fully on his background as an MIT-trained engineer and aided in placing his company as the #33 Fastest Growing Company in America on the Inc. 500 List by relying on creating a system of putting science into sales, by focusing his efforts on building a sales organization with governance and standardization in place from hiring, aligning, developing, retaining and performing. He built a system that relies on metrics and quantitative analysis.

Below is a chart of how to integrate Science into Selling to build a scalable predictable sales organization. And in these two words there is a lot of dimensions.

How We Could Help

Whether your sales force organization needs a tweak, an entire transformation, some sort of optimization, or you are facing challenges in building a scalable predictable sales organization HEED takes full ownership in getting this well crafted and executed through putting science into sales.

If you are interested to have a complimentary consultation session for discussing your sales challenges, feel free to reach us or respond directly on mazen@heed-mm.com as we love to meet in this regards.

 

Managing Partner
mazen@heed-mm.com
Founder of HEED, a sales management consulting firm focused on aiding companies to structure, transform or optimize their sales by integrating science into selling.

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