Success in the new normal requires sales organisations to analyse virtual interactions, use insights in near real time, embrace digital channels, and adapt their sales reps. By focusing on building and scaling proven capabilities, sales leaders can trigger the domino effect they need to drive the next level of growth and performance.
As sales organisations shift to digital models with smarter processes, data and analytics across “boundaryless” structures, they need new capabilities.
At the same time, new verticals and segments may become more important. Investing time up front in anticipating key post pandemic capabilities can help sales organisations adapt more quickly.
Driving sales growth today requires fundamentally new ways of working as well as outstanding execution across large, decentralised sales teams and channel partners. While many sales leaders accept this reality in principle, not enough focus goes into driving this level of change.
Advances in the right machine learning and analytics mean that sales leaders can now drive and scale meaningful changes that pay off today and tomorrow, with companies who get this right typically seeing 5 to 10 percent revenue growth with the same or improved margins, often within a few months.
Best-in-class sales organisations place an enormous emphasis on building frontline capabilities during a transformation; this applies to their own sales force and channel partners. They recognize that otherwise there is no hope of any new tool or new approach delivering results.
Successful sales transformation programs rely on a deep understanding of the needs of your customer, the salespeople and a willingness to work back from there to deliver insights that actually help reps sell better. The best sales organisations use data to understand the effect of all the steps in sales, from what matters most in driving a sales opportunity forward to where reps struggle or miss opportunities.
They then package those insights and send them to sales reps. Actively involving sales reps in the process empowers the sales force and greatly increases the chances of providing relevant and easy-to-use solutions.
As part of a sales transformation focusing on pricing and growth, a chemicals company used analytical tools that gave the field sales force transparency on the overall business, which encouraged and enabled them to create their own strategies and implementation plans.
They could create their own projects on the platform, which of course could be tracked by managers, and the impact was impressive: within just a few weeks of implementation, churn was down and pricing was up, and within a year, it contributed an additional $50 million to EBITDA.
The magic was the combination of getting insights to the front line in a simple, easy-to-digest way while allowing reps the freedom to explore some of the underlying input, which let them develop their own ideas.
Source: Mckinsey 2021.
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