Implement a Good Sales System and Stop Throwing Money Away

By Mike Hancock, ViaMetric Partner

Peter Ejtel over at Sales Mindset is talking this week about the non-delivery of an item he ordered online six weeks ago, and the numerous times that customer service has promised the item, which was supposed to be next-day shipment. This one has my head reeling, so many times the sale could have fallen though the cracks.

Unfortunately a lot of business falls through the crack as a result of poor systems and inattention. Peter’s story of trying to buy a whiteboard from Staples online deals with a closed sale, and because it’s not a critical matter he’s rolling with it. But imagine if this were a prospect you were trying to close, or a customer you were trying to up-sell. There are half a dozen times in the story where we can see we would have lost the prospect/customer forever.

I’m sure the people at Staples come to work and try to do a decent job every day. It’s their system that’s failing. The fulfillment part of the system is not talking to the front-office part - which seems inexcusable in this day and age, especially for a company whose business is shipping product.

The best salespeople create process and systems. It’s the first thing we do as we get started, and for “A” players it’s second nature and happens automatically; the system required to find, activate, and incubate our sales prospects. The process and system that keeps track of leads, prospects, and promises made. And in case we forget, there’s a sales manager hounding us to fill out the paperwork, take the follow-up action, and so on.

The “B” and “C” players we all have in our sales organizations, struggle to find, activate, and incubate opportunities without quality sales process and systems. They allow prospects to fall though the cracks. They’re too busy, or too tired, to try one more follow-up with the non-responsive leads. Even the best sales people, without a quality system, will allow these challenges to get the best of them from time to time. This is why a solid incubation system is required. An incubation system allows us to plan our follow-up and puts our actions on a timetable. It forces us to stay in touch, in a timely manner, with key messages, with our leads and prospects which are not active opportunities. Beyond prospects and customers, it enables us to stay in touch with our entire circle of influence; without any specific expectations.

There is a lot of software available that tries to help us stick to a sales system. Most everyone has heard of ACT. In the larger scheme, CRM systems hold all kinds of information about customers and prospects, and today’s software is getting increasingly sophisticated. But the majority of today’s CRM systems fall woefully short when it comes to automating the types of processes we’ve been discussing.

One of the big corporate goals today is integration, throughout the entire enterprise, of all the different information systems. This would facilitate the prospect/customer receiving a uniquely coordinated and, in many cases, tailored treatment at every touchpoint during the find, activate, and incubate process. In this light, it’s easy to see that Staples is simply low on the ladder of companies achieving this.

The final judgment rendered about Staples in Peter’s story is not that their system is no good; their process and system is just not good enough for today’s markets and today’s customers.

The moral of this story is so simple that I’d better try to say it very succinctly, “define a solid process, implement it into a quality system, and don’t let any business fall through the cracks… ever”.

And yes, that could mean using Viametric, unless you’ve already defined a process and implemented it into a system, likely outside your CRM tool, as good as ours for Demand Generation and Sales Effectiveness.

If you would like to brainstorm on it a bit, give us a call. What have you got to lose? Worst case you get a fresh set of experienced eyes that might give you a new idea or two.

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