Aug 27 2008
Small Business Tips – Why Build A Sales System
In this article, I want to look at the question “why build a sales system?” Why not just seek out and recruit experienced sales people to do the job of making sales for our organization and then pay them or fire them based on their performance and their results?
Most small business owners opt for the latter. They look for experienced sales people, give them a few product training sessions and then throw them in the deep end, the general assumption being that they’ll learn whatever is required as they go.
In my experience, this is a short term solution for a long-term problem which will only perpetuate itself if not properly addressed and resolved.
I take my children to school every morning. On the way to school, there’s a company that supplies outdoor paving and tiles to home builders. Their notice board often displays a sign that says “Experienced Full-Time Sales Person Wanted. Apply Within!”
This is a company that has no sales system. If they did, they would not be advertising for an “experienced” sales person. They would look for people with no sales experience, train them using a proven sales methodology that they would have developed, documented and implemented as their own business developed and grew and everything would operate differently, because systems-driven enterprises are significantly different than people-dependent businesses.
So, as part of the process of answering the question “why build a sales system?”, let’s begin by first looking at the perceived benefits of using a sales system vs. relying on “experienced” sales people to do the job:
1) A standardized, documented sales system protects a business from suffering liabilities and experiencing costly setbacks.
We are all familiar with businesses where business owners, managers and key personnel carry the bulk of the business knowledge and vital business information inside their heads.
This can pose a serious threat for the organization as a whole, especially if the information isn’t properly documented or made readily accessible to people in the business that may need to access this information in certain circumstances.
For example, think what would happen to a business with no documented systems if something unexpected were to happen to a top sales person? What if a sales person who is responsible for bringing in a significant portion of the business sales revenue gets hired by a competitor and leaves? What if this person’s sales approach relied heavily on their charismatic personality, their ability to make cold calls persuasively, their agressive closing skills, etc …?
Which of these “assets” would the business without a standardized, documented sales process retain when their super sales person left? None! They are not assets for the business, they are assets for the sales person who just left.
Any skills or attributes that are the subjective property of the sales person can, in fact, be a liability for the business in the long run. A business that depends on hiring “experienced” sales people is operating on dangerous grounds and more likely than not will suffer a significant setback should that “experienced” sales person leave.
An “experienced” sales person, by definition, joins a new business employer with their own internal sales system. And because their internal sales system is often their only source of leverage and bargaining power when it comes to negotiating their terms of employment, no employer should expect them to hand over their knowledge and skills to the company. This means that, if a business employs, say, two or three “experienced” sales people, then each member of the sales team most likely will follow a different internal system for selling the company’s products and services. This is all fine and good on the front end (i.e. generating leads, making sales appointments and closing new business deals), but it usually translates into an administrative nightmare on the backend, as processes and procedures are not followed, and the required paperwork that need to be filled in along the way gets submitted with incorrect details and missing information.
Having a standardized, documented sales system means that all information follows the same processes and procedures throughout the entire sales workflow, and that all sales data, pending deals, customer records, etc … are centralized and stored by the company. This approach does not require “experienced” sales people … it does require, however, a great deal of planning and knowledge of systems building beforehand, but it will eliminate the costly setbacks and liabilities discussed above.
Read the rest of this article here: Selling System
