x

Chartered Sales
Force Analyst
Foundation
Reading Compendium 2013
This subject guide is offered as part of the material for
the Level 1 curriculum of CSFA. For more information
about the program please visit our website
www.mercadeoedu.org

Contents
Foreword from academia

Foreword from industry

Introduction

Aims and Objectives of the course

Learning Outcomes

Structure of the guide

10

How to use this subject guide

10

Essential reading

11

Online study resources

12

Journals and other resources

13

Examination advice

13

Part 1 Strategy

15

Science of sales force effectiveness

16

Greater force in numbers or greater productivity?

Putting Science into Sales

16
16

Fixing targets

17

Focussed offerings

18

Optimized automation, tools, and procedures

18

Performance management

19

Sales force deployment

19

So, how to sell smarter?

20

Smartly allocating Time and Resources

21

Account Potential

22

Target the Right Prospects and Customers

24

Deliver the Right Conversations

24

Ensure the Right Behaviors

24

Do the numbers

24

Business cycles vis--vis sales strategy

Role of the sales manager
5 genuine sales management mistakes
Sales Strategy

26
28
29
32

Operationalising the strategy

35

Return on sales effort

38

Specific case of recession strategy

38

Consumer behaviour in a recession

40

Hypotheses for consumer behavior during the recession

41

Sales of services

43

Unique Circumstances
Levers to maximize SFE

45
47

Improving Lead & Pipeline Management

48

Refining Channel Management

51

Maximising the mix in selling

52

Good ol discount schemes anyone?

54

Types of discounts

55

Downside of this strategy

56

Creating and serving profitable customers

57

Creating right incentive structure

61

Channel Management

62

What is a channel

63

What is channel management?

64

The channel establishment plans

66

Channel Optimization

67

Channel Migration

67

Channel Integration

68

Channel strategy

68

ROI for the channel

70

Sales Strategy for evolving channels

72

Part 2 - Structure

76

Understanding consumer decisions

77

Situational Factors That Affect Peoples Buying Behavior

79

Consumers Physical Situation

80

Consumers Social Situation

80

Consumers Time Situation

81

Consumers Purchase Reason

81

Consumers personality situation

81

Consumers Perception

82

Some academic insights

82

Economic Man

83

Psychodynamic

83

Behaviourist

83

Cognitive

84

Humanistic

84

Moving from selling a product to creating value for customer

Cross check the sales steps
Customer segmentation and sales objectives

85
85
87

Value Proposition Definition

88

Resource Prioritization and Channel Management

89

Threat Board Analysis

90

Marketing & Sales Training

90

Special Situations

91

Who should be involved in customer segmentation?

91

What criteria should be used to segment customers

92

What information should be known

93

Sales Segments

93

Effective segmentation

93

Make segmentation work by emphasizing customer value and customer priorities

96

Tailor the selling approach to suit customer needs

97

Creating value across the Buying Process

98

Sales process

100

Designing the sales structure

104

Free up the sales force to spend its time actually selling

105

Close the capability gap with the right skills and the right tools

105

Sales Force Dimensioning

107

Sales forecasting

108

Stage 1 Estimate market demand

109

Stage 2 Estimate demand which can be captured

111

Stage 3 Pre sales plan and refine

111

Part 3 - Process

112

Performance & Incentivisation

113

Motivation
Structure incentives to reward profit and new value, not volume

116
117

Designing a performce system

119

Performace measures

122

Commission and bonus options

123

Part 4 - Systems

125

Driving sales force effectiveness

126

Thank You

128

Contact us

129

Foreword from academia

st

The way we sell and the way we do business in the 21 century is proving to be a very different
proposition from the traditions established in the 20th century. Selling now requires a different philosophy
and approach. Selling and service now go hand in hand so we all need to be much more proactive. There
are now very few absolutes everything is subject to evolution and reinvention. It is no longer just about
doing deals but all about developing strong relationships that go beyond great products, great service and
great design.
Fragmentation and segmentation are well and truly taking over from mass marketing. Sales and marketing
teams will need to work together even more closely and take their listening skills to a whole new level.
Smart firms will tune in to where buyers are electing to spend time and money. Ready or not, new
consumer markets will emerge demanding different ways of doing business. This means sales teams will
need to be even more targeted in their sales planning and prospecting efforts no more scatter gun
approach. Marketing teams will need to stop producing catch-all marketing materials that ignore buyer
preferences and attitudes at their peril. Leaders will need to start looking at their strategys evaluation
measures and start measuring marketing and sales teams on those same measures.
In the modern world, buyers needs are polarising between being completing simple transactions and
navigating complex arrangements. If the former, the sales journey needs to be supported by systems and
processes that make the transaction as quick and as efficient as possible. If the latter, organisations need
highly skilled people as the primary points of contact engaging in a proactive consultative approach to
selling. With access to so much information, buyers have grown more sophisticated and better informed
consumers, especially in the B2B space. The savvy business person knows that many of those commodity
purchases they have traditionally made face-to-face with a sales person, can now be made online thus
saving their valuable time and money. 2012 saw the beginning of a massive restructure of transactional
sales forces as clients go online, and ditch the order taker who adds no value. Smart sales leaders know
this sacred cow is no longer for this world and has already begun planning for a major transition into the
blended world of online and personal selling. These leaders are choosing to invest in sales forces that
educate clients on how to run a better business and achieve better results.
Corporate customers are seeking individualised value propositions and customised offerings that
accelerate their business results. Empowered and informed by the Internet and influenced by their peers,
these customers have come to expect control of their buying experiences. If you are accustomed to selling
products and walking away, your business will be forced to prove how you add real value. So do not even
for a minute, take your customers for granted, patronise them or treat them like idiots or you will hear
about it via Twitter and Facebook or other social media channels where your future sales will be hung out
to dry.
Smart sales professionals have always known that they need to calibrate where a prospective customer is
at before they start offering up products or solutions. They know their role varies along a continuum of
education to facilitation. By now, smart sales leaders know how to recruit in and develop their sales teams
to be educators, facilitators and not only product sales people. Their investment in the sales people will
result in a whole new skill set including patience, listening, creative problem solving and dealing with
ambiguity and complexity. Customers will come to value the new and improved sales approach because
going ahead, the customer, not the product, will be at the heart of the sale and they know the sales person

will help them make the right decisions moving forward.

Foreword from industry

There is not a single area of your life where you can not benefit from sales skills. Teachers use sales skills
every day. Political and religious leaders use sales skills (albeit in different forms!). Consultants and ibankers use sales skills. Mother Teresa used sales skills. And sales people use sales skills. Regardless of
what you do, sales skills will increase your probability of success and your ability to motivate, instruct,
encourage, coach, communicate and reach people.
The finest sales people in the world are helpful, not pushy. Some of the highest performing sales people
are introverts, not the stereotypical extroverts. The most important attribute of any sales person is their
attitude. The best sales person believes in the value of what they do and in their product or service, and
their most important skill is to ask the right questions and listen to their buyers responses. The right
questions will vary depending on the product or service, but in general terms they will work with their
buyers, nurturing and learning about them to identify exactly what those buyers are looking for, what
problems or concerns they want to solve and what outcomes they are seeking.
Then, and only then, a good salesperson will provide meaningful recommendations, suggestions, counsel,
direction and advice on the buyers buying decisions and the products and services they should choose
and the strategies they should use based on their personal experience of what actually works. This allows
their buyers to make an informed decision based on what is in their best interest. And of course a good
salesperson also needs to know how and when to ask for the order?

Introduction
Are great salesperson made or born? And what is the difference between sales and marketing? To be
precise what is the difference between the courses offered at multiple B-schools and the experience of
ground realities in sales. Irrespective of the strategy of the firm or the dazzle of the product line up, from
Unilever to Amazon, from pizzas to laptops - not to take away from the depth of product attributes or the
utility value, but a product can be a star or a dud depending on the efforts of the salesforce. In recent
times, the concept of four Cs1 has been introduced as a more customer-driven Sales force placement of
four Ps of marketing. And these 4 Cs - (consumer, cost, communication, convenience) are the basis for
a concerted sales effort.
Today, most firms are smart enough to understand the impact of selling on success and such smart firms
are turning selling into science. They are not depending merely on a few sales stars' built-in talents and
on-field charm n magic. Instead, they are reinventing their go-to-market approaches by using volumes of
data, in-depth analysis and systematic tools to increase the productivity of sales members to boost the
performance of all their average performers, up closer to the top quartile.
By taking a systematic and data-driven approach to reinventing their sales strategies, these organizations
are better able to respond to changing market dynamics2. They are attracting the customers they desire, at
a faster speed, and increasing average productivity across the sales force. Based on statistics available
online, average sales per Sales force can increase by as much as 50% in two-three years, with most firms
seeing increases in sales around 30%. As a result, these firms are growing at surprising rates. SAP
America, for example, has more than doubled its software licensing business in three years, increasing its
market share by 17 points3.
Firms who go a step further and actually implement this; tend to follow a few basic practices. Instead of
setting the sales goals for every region and segment as merely an add-on to last years achievements,
firms take the bottoms-up approach to setting sales goals. They gather market (consumer and
competitive) data, then set growth targets in an iterative fashion to make them more realistic and more
intuitive. Sales managers can use the data to develop accurate forecasts and set expectations for sales
that are better aligned with corporate goals. Best-practice firms reach their (aggressive!) sales targets by
increasing an individual Sales force's productivity and only then selectively (and judiciously) adding more
"feet-on-the-street". To make sales-force productivity predictable and manageable, sales leaders tend to
focus on four levers in an integrative approach.

i.

Focussed offerings selling our products and services to the most appropriate and hence the
most profitable segments.

ii.

Supportive automation tools and SOPs - Disciplined sales management processes supported
strongly with tools and technology (POS scanners, SIM based tracking of large B2B
consignments, CRM for organized retail etc).

iii.

Performance management aligning the metrics, incentives and importantly the training and
development programs to prompt the right behavior and reward high performers.

TheauthorshererefertoLauterborn'sfourCsstudentscanreferfordetailstohttp://www.rlauterborn.com/pubs/pdfs/4_Cs.pdf
AccordingtoBain&Company'sanalysisavailableforreadingathttp://www.bain.com/publications/
3
AccordingtotheHarvardBusinessReviewartciclesavailableatwww.hbr.org
2

iv.

Sales force deployment - covering the available opportunities with the right sales channels such
as direct sales, indirect sales, TV-sales, e-sales at the right levels so that prospective and current
customers can be serviced effectively and economically.

Successful firms are always asking, "How can I do better?" Cisco Systems, famed for its use of Webbased sales tools, draws information from a data-rich sales performance websites to improve its
forecasting accuracy. The company recently provided its force with state-of-the-art personal digital
assistants with custom applications for the devices that let force check all of their customers' recent
activities. Like Cisco, smart sales leaders know they can no longer rely on their top sellers to sustain sales
growth. One pharmaceutical services company has developed a multi-stage sales mentoring programme
that pays a small commission to the mentor for the productivity of the sales during the programme. The
overall goal is to narrow the gap between the stars and the rest of the sales force. Those firms that do it
well have seen the sales of low performing force increases anywhere from 40% to 200%. But practitioners
of the scientific approach also know that improved sales can vanish in an instant. Those sales leaders are
already incubating their next generation of tactics and strategies so that they can continue to reinvent
sales-force effectiveness.
Most fresh graduates of business have the impression that a sale is marketing and that the text-book
curriculum corresponds to the ground realities. Often such grand ideas are brought to ground on day one
of their internship or probation with a word from their immediate superior please leave what you have
studied on the table and listen to me, ground realities are very different or words to that effect. This myth
is rooted in the belief that marketing is a scoring subject and hence abstract and easy. They forget that
consultants and investment bankers (the primary high-salary non-marketing targets) have to make sales
pitches as a routine part of their duties, though much of what they sell has been a matter of debate.
This course hopes to provide ample empirical and theoritical evidence to show that sales is a divison and
specialization in its own right and that sales in fact forms the foundation stone and turning point of any
product or its related campaign. It is particularly a relevant course for those of you who want to go on, to
careers in developing sales promotions, pitches and effectively managing sales in organizations as diverse
as P&G to CISCO.
This course complements, rather than displaces a number of other frequently taught courses, most
obviously Consumer Behavior, Sales Management, Channel Strategy and Services Marketing. We hope
that you enjoy studying this course and learn a few further nuances of the fine art of selling.

Aims and Objectives of the course

This course uses an on-the-field approach to examine the sales management process and analyse the
roots of effective sales force management. The objectives specifically include:
i.

To explain sales strategies, sales organizations as theoretical concepts.

ii.

To analyse the development implications of different sales forms.

iii.

To examine coordination in the increasingly complex institutional systems that characterise the
most sales whether to business or by retail.

iv.

To explore how characteristics of this complex inter-dependence are related to the persistence of
high and low states of sales and what we as students of sales can do about it.

Ask yourself as a potential area sales manager?

Do you know, who your most profitable customers are and why? Or, who the most valuable
prospects are? Does your sales team spend the majority of its time focusing on the highest-value
targets?

Is your value proposition compelling and relevant for the highest-value segments? Do you tailor
your selling approach and offering only by customer size and geography, or also by customer
value?

Is your sales force coverage model organized to fully leverage your offerings? Do you have the
right people with the right skills to deliver your value proposition? Are you maximizing the time that
your sales force spends selling, versus the time it spends doing administrative tasks?

Is your sales training session(s) built around improving results? Does the sales force find them
relevant? Does your sales force have the tools it needs to drive revenue and profit growth? Do
your compensation system and evaluation metrics encourage behavior that is focused on value
growth, not just on revenue growth?

Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course and having completed the essential reading and activities you should be able to:
i.

Discuss what effective sales management constellations comprise, how they come about, and
under what conditions they perish.

ii.

Explain the role of incentives in sales behaviour and performance.

iii.

Compare and contrast why certain sales structures are better suited to certain types of services
and/or environments than others.

iv.

Go and change the world.

Structure of the guide

We aim to look at sales force effectiveness from 4 different yet inter-dependent lenses

We have attempted to distribute these topics under 2 levels basic and advanced with both of them
following the pyramid above and focusing on topics suitable for starters in this field and for students about
to join or already in industry.
Topic
Foreword

Marketknow
how

Process

Process

Management

CSFAlevel1
Howtosupportthesalesforceto
achievemore
Salesforceexcellence scienceandart
Salessegments
SalesStrategyDimensions
Leverstomaximizesalesforce
effectiveness
ChannelManagement
Understandingconsumerpurchase
decisions
CustomerSegmentation
Salesprocess
Designingthesalesstructure
SalesForceDimensioning

SalesPlanning,Forecasting&Budgeting

Performance&Incentivisation

Systems

Implementation
Monitoring

Drivingsalesforceeffectiveness

Strategy

Structure

Subtopic
Analysingthe
salesfunction

CSFAlevel2
Howcomplex canthesalesmodelget?

CoverageModel
StrategicSalesForceManagement
Howreadyisyoursalesforce?
StagesofExcellenceforSFE
SalesForecasting
Dedicatedservicesalesforce
Implementationaspects
Resource Deployment
SalesTerritoryAlignment
SalesForceUtilizationManagement
SalesTalentTraining,coaching
Howtogetthemostoutofyoursales
team
SalesExecutionSupportPeople,
Process,Technology
Perfectingsalesexecution
Howtoconductadiagnostic

How to use this subject guide
The aim of this subject guide is to help you to interpret the syllabus. It outlines what you are expected to
know for each area of the syllabus, and suggests relevant readings to help you understand the material.
There are no set textbooks which you must read for this course, but you will find that much of the

information you need to learn and understand is contained in examples and activities within the subject
guide itself. If you are to succeed in this course, it is important that you complete the essential readings;
the adjective essential is not accidental.
We recommend that you work through the guide in chapter order, reading the essential texts beforehand.
The activities provided will help to strengthen your understanding of key concepts, and to link them
together. You may wish to supplement your studies by reading among the further references provided in
each chapter. Where appropriate, useful internet resources are provided which you may take advantage
of. These provide, data which you can use to explore particular topics further, case studies that illustrate
specific points, or links to important organisations and research groups working on relevant issues.
It is important that you appreciate that different topics are not self contained. There is a degree of overlap
between them, and you are guided in this respect by the cross-referencing between different chapters. In
terms of studying this subject, the chapters of this guide are designed as self-contained courses of study,
but for examination purposes you need to have an understanding of the subject as a whole. At the end of
each chapter you will find a checklist of your learning outcomes, which is a list of the main points that you
should understand, once you have covered the material in the guide and the associated readings.

Essential reading
We would strongly advise students of sales & marketing to go through these books. While they are not
textbooks in an academic sense, these are books which are rich with practical knowledge and can give
you a booster dose of ready-to-use examples of success (and failure!). New editions of one or more of
these books may have been published by the time you study this course. You can use a more recent
edition of any of the books; use the detailed chapter and section headings and the index to identify
relevant readings.

Good to Great: Why Some Firms Make the Leap and Others Dont - Good to Great is a book
by Jim Collins that has stood the test of time. Jim Collins and a team of 20 researchers look to see
what it took to take firms from good to great. The book covers eleven firms that Collins and his
team considered to be great. They studied firms that delivered returned 3 times the market over a
15 year period. By using fifteen years it took the luck factor out of the equation. We like the entire
book, but one of the key take aways for sales managers would be chapter two. Level 5 leadership.
You will get a lot out of this section. This entire concept of good to great is truly fascinating. It is
based on the fact that if you accept good, you can never become great.

The Accidental Sales Manager: How to Take Control and Lead Your Sales Team to Record
Profits - Not everyone started off thinking they would be responsible for leading a sales team.
Most people become sales managers because they were successful in the field. The problem is
that when their success is based on the success of the team, they struggle. The most neglected
position in the business world is that of the sales manager. This book takes a look at the role of
the sales manager and how you can move from selling to managing with better success. Even if
you have been managing for a while.

Dont Fire Them, Fire Them Up: Motivate Yourself and Your Team - This is the story of a new
sales manager taking on a new team, in a new city, that was not meeting the mark. Most people
would just say if the sales-person are not getting it done, just get rid of them and start over. Frank
Pacetta, the young manager and Author, saw it differently. He engaged the staff and found that
with support and motivation, he could help them to grow and meet and exceed expectations. We
recommend this to any sales manager that is looking to build a strong team and better understand

how leaders can develop their teams. We think youll find that this book will provide you with in
sight and help you motivate your team and yourself.

Cracking the Sales Management Code Quite simply, this is the data-driven sales managers
bible. Beyond organizational leadership or individual coaching, this book is an operating manual
for how to effectively manage a sales force. Jordan shows you why focusing on Results and Sales
Objectives is completely wrong. Surprised? Well, yes, you should be! So read this book. He then
identifies the key sales performance metricst hat all managers should focus on and the
fundamental sales processes that will drive sales success. It is an eye opening book and critical to
read and follow.

HBRS 10 Must Reads: The Essentials - What the folks at Harvard Business Review did, was go
through hundreds of articles and selected what they felt was essential reading for managers. The
first book to read in the series is The Essentials. In the Essentials you get ten articles by authors
like Michael Porter on creating competitive advantage and distinguishing your company from
rivals. Peter Drucker on managing your career by evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses.
Robert Kaplan and David Norton on measuring your companys strategy with the Balanced
Scorecard. Other articles include creating competitive advantage, leading change, using emotional
intelligence, orchestrating innovation, and the one topic we love the most, keeping customers
loyal. This is an excellent reference for any manager.

Strategic Selling - This is the masterwork when it comes to understanding how a company's
sales strategy--and the execution of that strategy--can make or break a business model. Authors
Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman (along with their amanuensis Tad Tuleja) detail the best
practices of successful firms, showing how and why their strategies have worked.

Last but not the very least, Secrets of Closing the Sale This book is not just about the close.
But since the close is "payday" in selling, Zig included it in the title. He emphasizes that you have
to cover "all of the bases" in order to reach the close. You have to find a prospective customer.
You have to make an appointment to meet the prospect. You have to build an initial rapport and
trust. You have to tell the prospect a good story. You have to answer the prospect's objections.
Then you can close the sale. There are plenty of humorous illustrations and stories in the book to
keep the reader involved. A lot of material was contributed to Zig by salespersons in the field to
help keep the material fresh and up-to-date, although this book was published in 1984.

Online study resources

You are also advised to read a number of articles which are available online :

The Harvard Business review blog and case studies - written by professors at HBS and at renowned
business programs worldwide and focus on actual problems and decisions firms face in multiple
domains including sales management Accesible at http://hbr.org/case-studies

The Bain & company publishes a brilliant set of articles on the sales effectiveness techniques pracised
by several firms and their outcomes as caselets these can be accessed
http://www.bain.com/consulting-services/customer-strategy-and-marketing/sales-and-channeleffectiveness.aspx

at

There are multiple excellent blogs on the internet which are rich with worldly-wise as well as academic
wisdom. While we can not conduct a comprehensive assessment of all blogs out there, there are a few
we would recommend :

You can refer at any time to www.mercadeoedu.org/mercadeowords which is the CSFA website
discussion forum and start threads or refer to our write-ups from industry professionals and
academia.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

http://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog/

http://www.salesgravy.com/women-in-sales/

http://www.omghub.com/

http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk/

and many more

Journals and other resources

Please note that as long as you run through the essential reading you are then free to read around the
subject area in any text, paper or online resource. You will need to support your learning by reading as
widely as possible and by thinking about how these principles apply in the real world.
In addition to the subject guide and the essential reading, it is crucial that you take advantage of the study
resources that are available online for this course, including the website and the Online Resources. You
can access the website, the Online Resources via the Student Portal at: www.mercadeoedu.org
You should receive your login details in your study pack. If you have not, or you have forgotten your login
details, please email us at support@mercadeoedu.org quoting your student number.

Examination advice
Important: the information and advice given in the following section is based on the examination structure
used at the time this guide was written. We strongly advise you to check both the current Regulations for
relevant information about the examination, and the website where you should be advised of any
forthcoming changes. You should also carefully check the rubric/instructions on the paper you actually sit
and follow those instructions.
Remember, it is important to check the website for:

Up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements for this course.

Where available, past examination papers and Examiners commentaries for the course which give
advice on how each question might best be answered?

The Examiner attempts to ensure that all the topics covered in the syllabus and subject guide are
examined. Some questions could cover more than one topic from the syllabus since the different topics
are not self-contained.

Science of sales force effectiveness

Himanshu Chauhan leaned back in his chair, frowning. Head Office had asked for another 10% increase in
sales from his division this year, and guess whose KRA that goal would fall into? Wishing for the good old
days, when he could just announce a 10% target, spread it over all his regions, and then count on the
sales persons for each region and product to rake it in. Sure, some would fall short, but the real studs
would make up the difference. Today, the purchasing departments of Himanshus customers used
complex algorithms to choose vendors for routine buys; pure economics often scored over personal
relationships. For more complex sales, procurement teams wanted customized solutions. There is no way
one person could close those deals, no matter how much teen-patti/29 he or she played. Most of the time,
you needed a team of product and industry experts, not to mention strong incentives and a lot of backoffice support.

Real-life sales managers often face similar problems. Over the past few years, we have listened to these
sorts of challenges with senior executives in Himanshus position. Even though the procurement world
around them was changing, they were still selling by breaking down targets from higher management and
religiously putting more runs and shorter TATs, in the hope that some of those new boys would once again
save the day. Today, sales leaders are dramatically changing the way they run their teams. They are
redesigning their sales approaches to respond to new market dynamics. They are expanding their lists of
target customers beyond what was previously considered. They are increasing their sales force
productivity not merely by hiring (or poaching!) the talented individuals but by helping the existing team to
sell more.

Greater force in numbers or greater productivity?

What upcoming leaders have in common might be called a scientific approach to channel and sales force
effectiveness. It is a method that puts science around the art of selling, relying not just on intuition,
relationships and raw selling talent - the qualities of the wonder boy - but also on data, analysis,
processes, and technical tools to redraw the boundaries of thinking and increase sales forces productivity.
The target is not to Sales forcelace wonder boys but to bridge the gap between the top quartile and the
rest of the sales force. Firms that use the strategy well have found that, while even top sellers do better,
sales people in the lower quartiles show strong improvement, with productivity hikes. Such hikes enhance
the performance of the sales team as a whole and enable a company to reduce the expense of hiring new
talent. The drama is in the results, not the details. As Rocket Singh would have put it even spiderman
has to take risks, I am merely a salesman ...

Putting Science into Sales

Chauhans first step was to recharge the way he segmented customers - by using the data collected from
past transactions and enquiries. The new database held information such as standard industrial
classification codes, the type of enquiries being classiifed, and so on. Then Chauhan asked his field
managers to create an indicative list of characteristics for a potential customer, criteria that they believed
would correlate with a customers likelihood of doing business with his firm. He took the features they
came up with, ran regressions against the database of earlier interactions with these customers, and
identified six criteria that had high correlations. If a prospective customer scored high on those selected

criteriasuch as predicted capital expenditures and number of enquiries for upgrades - the probability that
it would do business with his firm was high.
The division decided on its list of prospects based on these six attributes. Himanshu then worked on the
new list for a while. Something interesting showed up. We found that the top quartile of potential
customers were three times more likely to do a deal with us than the bottom 3 quartiles says Chauhan. In
other words, that top group was made up of the new high-priority prospects only about half of them had
previously been classified as attractive. The company had, in effect, identified a whole new set of new
high-priority prospects that it would otherwise have overlooked!
But it was not just the increase in sales potential that made the difference; the new information also
allowed Chauhan to redesign his sales force. e.g., he could take on the job of restructuring territories,
ensuring that each one contained plenty of opportunities and hence equal hunting grounds. In some
cases, that meant narrowing assigned areas based on the caliber of leads, re-evaluating territories, or
creating new territories entirely. When you target the market with a systematic approach, Chauhan says,
you will never knowingly have territories that could intrinsically under-perform.
On the performance management front, the data allowed Chauhan to get new and less-experienced force
up to speed faster. So much of the process of ramping up salesperson is just pointing them at the right
targets, he says. If you can do that, you will get a big boost in productivity.
Chauhan also used the information to support his sales force with new tools and processes for the field,
such as targeted marketing campaigns that zeroed in on high-potential segments. Now every lead and
piece of business generated gets tagged to a particular campaign. It helps you to think about what
worked, what did not, and where to double down and spend dollars for greater return on the marketing
side, says Chauhan.
The divisions $300 million in new business for 2005 reflects both an increased sales pipeline and a 19%
higher rate of conversion, or closings, in a market the company once believed was maturing. That
revenue, Chauhan notes, is coming from customers that we know we would not have been calling on
without the new approach. At the end of the day, he says, it is about building our business around
customers and finding ways to help them grow.

Fixing targets
Fixing the annual sales objectives is any companys first step in creating a sales plan. Like our Himanshu
Chauhan, sales heads are used to setting goals based on managements aspirations for the company top
lines. Since such ambitions typically reflect wall-street expectations, they can not really be ignored. But
sales managers too often apply the targets across every product SKU and customer region, without
gathering the market (consumer behavior and competition) data that would make their goals more
practical. Since variations across regions and segments are the norm, sales force often ends up with
targets and quotas that are unrealistically high or low - either of which can demotivate a sales force.
To further understand how the new science of goal setting works, consider how Cisco Systems uses
technology to forecast sales. The firm created an internal dashboard of a site where managers could log in
and see up-to-the-minute sales performance, sliced by region, product line all the way down to the level of
individual sales executives. This also contains data about executives pipelines, including the size of each
opportunity, what kind of technology or upgrades the customer requested for, and who the potential
competitors are. Managers hold pipeline calls regular intervals and renew forecasts derived from the data
every week. They then roll up the numbers into weekly, monthly, and quarterly forecasts. The forecast
accuracy for our quarterly numbers tends to be within plus or minus 1% to 2%, says Inder Sidhu, Ciscos
vice president for worldwide sales strategy and planning. Like other best-practice firms, Cisco is not sitting
still. It provides its force with state-of-the-art PDAs, and custom applications for the devices designed to
boost productivity. One program speeds up data entry; another lets sales force check their customers

Sales Strategy
Each group or profession has a number of conventions that become deeply rooted in their ethos, some
stand the test of time and prove their value to the survival of the group over time; others fall as they are
challenged. There are a few which continue to be adhered to, by the masses even with their questionable
worth, and while a few members of the group move to alternatives, their demise is slow and damaging to
the well-being of those who continue to hold fast. Sales and sales person are no different; the always be
closing myth is one; the concept of value proposition based selling seems to have met its match with the
propagation of the Procurement and/or the elite edition Strategic Sourcing class. (Never understood the
strategic aspect here, please send us a note if you can explain!). Needs or pain based selling is slowly
proving to be ineffective, although still seems to be in vogue for many.
Another of these that is well entrenched is the whole notion of the positive karma attributed to openended questions, versus the constant bashing of closed-ended questions. More important is not the
type of question, but how it is asked, and when it comes to that, the words used and the sequence are
much more important than the type. And that is where the two words discussed here become important.
Now how you ask a question and why, are far more important than if they are open or closed ended. So
there you have them, the two words in question are: How and Why?
Once you focus on understanding how a company does things, and why they do it that way, you will
discover all the things you need to make a sale. Lets cover off a couple of basics, first gone are the days
when you can go in and ask what they do, with that information easily available on the web, just asking it
puts you behind the curve. Same with sector specific trends, it takes literally seconds to get a handle on
current trends, opportunities, threats etc. If you are talking to a manufacturer today in Southern China you
should be aware of the impact of a strengthening yuan, off-shore competitors in Taiwan and Phillipines,
and what have you. With simple tools like Google News, or other more specific services, it is easy to find
out what is keeping them awake at night, asking that is no longer impressive. The second is that many
sales people are reluctant to ask pointed questions that go to the heart of the matter. But if you do not ask
those questions you risk missing the opportunity that lies at the heart of the matter. If the question is there,
ask it!
Once you start using how and why as your lead questions you will be able to fully understand what the
client is thinking, what the opportunity is, and how you can help them succeed. Let us take a simple
example, you know they are using a competitive product/service, most force start positioning against the
current provider. Many ask what they like about the current provider; some ask what improvements they
would like to see if they could to the current product, hoping they will find that magical difference between
the two products. Would not you really rather know how they chose their current provider, allowing you to
understand how they make decisions. Would not you like to fully understand why they make decisions that
way, in fact why they chose that specific provider over the others?
Asking why and how questions help you understand the individual you are working with, not just the
organization, how they think, what may motivate them, and most importantly where they are in the
decision hierarchy. We always hear from sales force that are frustrated by the difficulty in finding the real
decision maker, or spending time with someone who lead them to believe they were the decision maker,
who after having invested time and energy, is found to be not. Again, here asking how and why will reduce
the stress and help you find the right decision maker. If you know how a prospect organization makes
decisions, you will inevitably learn who needs to be involved in that process, and what their role in the
process is. So if the last five times they bought a service like yours, the person you are working with met

Return on sales effort

Specific case of recession strategy
Rising unemployment, GDP losses, falling home prices, and a lack of consumer spending cause us to
think this dismal global economy will continue through 2013 and perhaps deep into 2014 or later.
Assuming we are right, following a sales strategy that amounts to paralysis is not a viable option. It will
severely diminish a companys market share and value. What then should a company do to make the best
of a bad situation and not only survive, but position itself for better performance in the recovery? It
depends. Sales strategy choices vary according to a companys performance-driven strength/vitality
relative to its competitors and the markets enthusiasm for the companys products/services. For example,
stronger firms can be more aggressive than weaker competitors in how much and where they invest to
harvest market enthusiasm. The challenges and corresponding strategy options are different when there is
a growing demand for a companys products than when the demand for products has matured.

PLC
stage

Product / Strong
Services
Demand

Weak

Growing

Mature

Emphasizesellingdisciplineandefficiency
Drivehighperfocrmancewithinvestments
Deployadditionalresourcestogeneratequalified Minimizevoluntarysalesforceturnover
leads,manageleadsfollowup
Evaluate sales effectiveness continually
Focus sales force on where to sell identify
shore up with training, best practices
highlypropabaleandprobablecustomers
sharing,utilizeautomationtools
Renfor e what and how to sell insisting on Recruit systematically to expand and
discipline in both value proposition and sales
strengthen resources, identifying and
process
seekingtraitsofsuccessfulsalesforce
Optimizesellingtime
Communicate often and clearly
challenges and opportunities impacting
Blend crossselling, customer penetration and
customers, product/service strengths to
newcustomersellingtoshortensalescycleand
help
customers,
sales
priorities,
achieveanacceptableBDcost
expectations
Managediscounting
Pay highperformers materially higher to induce Maximize granularity of perf tracking and
Salesforceorting
aspirations
Rewardhighperformersaggressively
Define value proposition, cut expenses and focus Focus on nature of customer relations and
bestresourcestoaddresscashposition
valuedeliveredtostrengthen/expandbase

Use solutions oriented sales approach to

communicate value for money in sales
collateral,advertisingandreleases

Terminateweakperformers

Strive
for
consultative
customer
relationshipsvaluepropositiontobemix
of customer needs and product/service
attributes

Ensure best relation resources are mapped to

most valuable customers to retain loyal
business

Use product/services track record of

creating revenues or reducing costs to
cnvertcompetitorscustomers

Team products/service experts and proven

BDers / closers against most valuable
prospectsbolstersalespipelineandimprove
winrate

Focus on price realization minimize

discounting in the value selling
environmentOpportunistically
upgrade
salesforce

Conduct win/loss post mortems to verify

customer needs are being identified/met and
cretedos/dontsforfuturesalescompetition

Monitor forecast accuracy and strive to

close deals within forecasted parameters
oftime,quantity,cost,conditions

Use new headcount combined with economy

reflecting quotas and elevated commission
ratestobalancecompensatincostofsales

Regular salesforce processreviews, make

sureprocessisalignedtocustomerneeds

Strong attention to top performers

celebrate success, recognize alongwith
compensations

It would not do any good for firms to just buckle up and hang on for their lives during the potentially wild
roller coaster ride leading to economic recovery. Get the self-assessment done and then design and
implement your strategy. Make sure salesperson know they must sell within their sales strategy. Wasted
time is lost revenue, profit and company value in every economic climate. Get moving and keep moving,
but move deliberately. Understanding your potential customer has never been more important and is the
basic tool in developing retail strategies and tactics for maintaining and increasing income in a recession.
After honing in on your USP for the short-term value for money, the sales person must be able to
forecast sales potential from various customer segments, including their interests, age, gender, values,
activities, buying patterns and personal styles. We all can do a few things differently in these times.

Get out and walk amongst your consumers and observe. In addition to reviewing current guest
surveys and marketing demographic studies, merchandisers can get out in their facilities and
observe the guests: What are they using? How do they approach or move through the store?
What are they drawn to? What do they pass up? Look at recent sales results: What are they
buying? What price points are the most successful? What categories are still strong?

Prioritize your customer segments/product niches. Begin sorting out how each customer segment
affects your earned income in terms of sales margins, operational expense, audience volume, and
growth potential. For example: Do these customers require special sales service with extra time
and effort by a sales associate or do they prefer self-service? Does this customer group expect
low retail prices which narrow the profit margins or do they buy the most profitable category of
merchandise? How large is this customer base? Are there barriers to gaining or losing sales from
this group? Is there a potential growth in this segment? How does each segment make their
buying decisions? Use a matrix to get a simple view of how each customer segment sales
potential falls in relation to the others. A prioritization can be made based upon which group has
the highest probability to bring in the most income. This prioritized customer segment list should
provide the merchandising team a clear picture of the groups upon which to focus attention and
investment.

Make each prioritized customer segment real for your merchandising team. Identify the principal
customer niches and develop model profiles. Brainstorm each customer segments mind set: What
would make them come in to your store? What would make them buy in your store? What movies
or sporting events will they be watching? What will they care about? Ask yourselves why would
they buy something from you? What are their styles in terms of fashion and home decor? What
kinds of books would they read? List out what you can do to provide the right products, displays,
price points, promotions, special store events and offers that will appeal to each customer
segment.

Levers to maximize SFE

Sales Force automation (SFA) was intended to help systematize the selling process and provide
management with visbility into sellers activities, but this approach does not necessarily make sales more
effective. Today, the goal should be to help sales people spend more time selling and less time performing
back-office tasks. But how can organizations get the most from sales tools to achieve the best possible
outcomes while still providing strategic decision makers with the information they need improve their
business?
Sales leaders when confronted with this dilemma need to have a working strategy to go around the same.
Firstly, they would need to protect their core customer franchisee sets by identify and focussing on such
critical customer segments. And, subsequently introducing both strategic and tactical changes (/
improvements) in their sales and channel management processes, where it matters most. Most such
interventions need more than having the right sales value propositions, resources/ support systems, and
consistent alignment with the organizations strategic goals, They requires interventions with metrics to
guide the salesforce to behave like owners if not become owners to deliver profitable growth.
The best of sales organizations seek and drive improvements in productivity and growth at all times for
that superior and competitive edge. They use the right combinations, with the right change management
plan, and focus their sales teams and channel partners on segmentation strategies, which positively
impacts, revenue and share. More than that, they create a high-performance organization pulling together
for breakthrough financial results to add great value and lend that sharp edge over competitors. As most
sales force desire to tell HO sir, you please give me this brand support and come sun or rain I will
do my numbers This is my territory and I will ensure no competitor ever wins here In sum, salesforce
effectiveness is all about that street-by-street, town-by-town and account-by-account winning. And
celebrating! Of-course.
Why does this disconnect happen? After all, markeing grads the world over study dozens of frameworks
and often employ them to analyse and drive sales further. So why these leaks do happens? Consider this
for a B2B environment.

Sales process
We all have heard it - we are all sales people! As with any operational function, there should be some type
of process or step by step way of doing it. Following a process, with Sales forceetition and practice, has
been proven to contribute to a positive outcome. Yes, you guessed it! There is a process to selling - known
as the sales cycle. Some businesses sell products, some sell services, some a combination of both. A
sales process or cycle applies to pretty much anything that you are selling. There are many variations of
the sales cycle, but there is also a set of basic steps. Keep in mind that not all of these steps may fit your
type or style of business and if they dont, thats ok. Modify them to fit your needs. Most salespeople and
business owners use these basic steps as a starting point to creating their own sales process.
First off, let us examine the word sell. The word comes from a Norwegian, Selje, and means to serve.
The word sell come from the verb to serve. So selling is really serving. The type of selling in this course
is about serving: it is not just about selling, not just about jamming a product down someone's throat, as it
may end up as a sale. It requires you to listen to the client, rather than trying to sell him without listening.
The idea is to listen to them before trying to sell anything. The key to selling is listening, and by listening
you serve. When a sales person actually listens to someone, they serve him or her.

The hiring manager looks across the table and ask you to tell him/her about the sales process that you
will use day in and day out? What will you say? It is my personality. I am a people person and people
like to buy from me I work harder than the other competitors. Chances are you will be shown the door
very quickly after one of these generic responses.
What the interviewer is looking for is to see if you have an established process for the time when you are
in front of the customer or buyer. What type of sales skill development training have you had? Is it
Consultative Selling, Spin Selling, Xerox Professional Selling Skills I & II, Face to Face Selling or some
other corporate sales training? Fortunately, most Fortune 500 sales people go to corporate sales training

Driving sales force effectiveness

When it comes to enhancing sales force productivity and performance, it's tempting to look for silver
bullets. Is customer retention declining? Okay, let's roll out a new sales training program that teaches
salespeople how to be more customer-focused. Is sales growth lagging? Let's implement a more
aggressive incentive plan to motivate the sales force. Is sales productivity decreasing? Let's build a Big
Data solution that enables salespeople to glean insights so they can sell smarter. One-dimensional
solutions like these are rarely enough to create permanent improvements in sales force effectiveness. A
sales force is complex, with many moving parts and interdependencies. Achieving sales force excellence,
or addressing a sales opportunity or challenge (such as revitalizing growth or enhancing customer
retention), typically requires improving upon a mixture of several sales force effectiveness drivers.
Excellent sales forces also ensure compatibility across these types of programs. For example, if sales
strategy calls for penetrating a new market segment, they enable the strategy with the right sales process,
an appropriate sales force size and structure, training and coaching programs, and data and tools that
facilitate salespeople's success. If salespeople have unequal market potential, they design performance
management and incentive programs that account for territory differences, or they realign territories to give
all salespeople a fair opportunity to succeed.
Vendors and their customers (channel partners or enterprise buyers) rely heavily upon each other for
business success. Yet, what should be perceived as a partnership is often rife with conflict. Perhaps the
leading causes of these relationship gaps are apparent conflicts in goals between vendors and their
customers. Each business desires growth. Yet, institutional priorities often drive decision making.
Unfortunately, in many B2B relationships, these priorities often fail to consider the implications that they
may have on another entity.
Salespersonsbusiness

SalesforceGoal

Salesforceexecution

ChannelCustomer

EnterpriseCustomer

Manufacturing/
Development

Increasingvolumereduces
fixed costs per unit and
recoupsR&Dexpenses

ProductPush

Thevendorsalesforce
does not understand
howwemakemoney
Thevendorsalesforce
expects us to be
guinea pigs with their
unproventechnology
Thevendorsalesforce
is trying to move
product that my
customers do not
want

Thevendorsalesforce
does not understand
mybusiness
Thevendorsalesforce
is minimizing how we
use our technology
today
Thevendorsalesforce
will
automatically
lower prices at the
end of the current
quarter

Adoptionofnewtechnology

Distribution

Increasing inventory turns

reduces likelihood of
holding ptoducts with
decliningdemand

Channel load / unload

incentives
Enterpriseincentives

Service

Post sale consultation nd

implementingcreatesnew
revenuestreams

Enterprise aocuntgrowth

Thevendorsalesforce
is attempting to steal
ourbestaccounts

Thevendorsalesforce
onlycaresaboutwhat
Ibuy,notwhatIneed

SMBGrowth

Thevendorsalesforce
wantstostealmoreof
ouraccounts

Thevendorsalesforce
has
too
many
opportunities on their
platetobeeffective

As sales leaders face an ever-changing market, any laundry list of drivers of sales forces efficiency a
list of activities that require constant attention and improvement can look daunting. That's where a clear
head and a purposeful prioritization process come in handy. We suggest that you rethink a few key of
these drivers at any point in time.