Is Your Sales Process Hurting or Helping Reps?

In our last post from our series on Driving Sales Transformation, we discussed what sales organizations can do to allow reps to exercise judgment.  And while most would agree that in theory reps exercising judgment is a good thing, the results of our quantitative analysis revealed that in practice, most sales organizations have adopted a philosophy of process discipline, seeking to ensure that all reps follow as closely as possible all the steps in a process that sales leaders have pre-determined to be effective at driving sales. But, as we have previously argued, our research shows that activity-driven process adherence is standing in the way of reps adopting winning sales behaviors.

So is your sales process currently hurting or helping reps sell? Obviously, we are not suggesting that sales organizations discard sales process, or eliminate the important oversight and controls that exist (for good reason) today.

The answer for most sales organizations lies in creating a sales process that shifts focus away from activities and towards customer outcomes.  Specifically, sales organizations should create a customer-verified sales process, as ADP did, which allows for a high level of control while still granting reps the autonomy required for them to exercise judgment.

CEB Sales Members, review how ADP’s ‘Buying Made Easy’ sales process incorporates customer verifiers, by listening to this webinar.

There are three main ways in which customer verifiers in the sales process support rep judgment while maximizing sales outcomes:

No Subjective Estimate: Since the customer rather than the rep indicates where a particular deal stands in a customer-verified process, managers can increasingly trust reps’ assessment of a commercial opportunity.
Clear Planning: Affirming deal progress allows reps to anticipate roadblocks and identify effective next steps.
Creativity: Because the means (sales activities) are de-emphasized in lieu of outcomes (verifiers), managers are encouraged to innovate rather than micro-manage reps.

CEB Sales Members, learn more about ADP’s Buying Made Easy tool, and register for one of our upcoming Executive Retreat or Regional Briefing sessions to learn more about this study.