Why to Map Our Sales Process

Jack Welch, GE CEO [1981-2006], in his book “WINNING”, structured and assessed employees as, 20% are top performers, 70% are the middle, and 10% are the bottom ones. Then he insisted on the “act” part asking managers to act according to this categorization. Stars to be nurtured and given incentives to excel, the bottom 10% to be weeded out, and a smart act would be to focus on increasing the performance of the middle 70%, they make up the majority”

Research showed that improving one’s strengths is less straightforward than fixing one’s weaknesses. What I mean by this is that fixing only 30% of the middle performers’ weakness will yield to a 55% increase on their sales performance. This sums up for a 38.5% increase of your overall company’s sales performance.

Challenges

The middle performers face on daily basis thousands of stuff that limit their performance. Some are obvious like not showing up prepared to a meeting, not understanding the clients needs, not following up, not establishing trust, submitting a proposal too early, contacting non-decision makers, not understanding the client decision process… and the list goes on.

Other challenges are much deeper, and might be difficult to spot, such as assertiveness, the will to do, the self-motive capability, the discipline of execution, the ability to communicate… and the list goes on as well.

The question remains why middle performers face such barriers whereas top performers occasionally do?

Following and applying the tailored specific mapping process might appear simple, however the magic lies in the understanding.

The difference is crucial.

Managerial and the Macro Level:

• Develop Strategic Perspective: Understanding your sales cycle and sales model will keep you on the edge, focusing on your core strengths and easily identifying the weaknesses.
• Increase visibility of the pipeline: if you don’t see it, you can’t understand it thus you cannot improve it.
• Brace best practices and performances: “Leaders who build and invest in their infrastructure are the ones that put themselves ahead from competition” Howard Schultz.
• Improve your forecasting precision and obviousness: Thus management will have solid foundation for planning ahead. Further a flexibility to change faster with the fast economic changes.

Sales Individual and the Micro Level:

• Drive for results: this map will be the guideline for understanding the sales process, what are you doing well, and the things that need improvement. Focusing on the latter will drive better results and accomplishing the set outcomes faster.
• Solve problems and analyze issues: It will aid in pulling sales people back on track when losing site, helps them to understand where they are positioned and when to come in or when to drop out of the deal.
• Inspire and motivate for high performance: Every step, task or action, coupled with a measurable outcome will act as a small win that ignites their actions, fuels their motive, and triggers their perception. Thus it shorten the sales cycle.  This is not a strategy or a plan but an understanding.
• Communicate powerfully: Support average with the needed tools that aid in whom to contact, how to qualify, what to ask, present, and when to follow up for bringing in sales regularly. Thus cloning more rainmakers.