The document discusses optimizing a company's sales process. It argues that selling is a process like any other business process that can be mapped, measured, and improved. An optimized sales process can help a company gain control over its selling efforts, sell more efficiently, reduce costs, focus resources, and improve sales forecasts. The document provides tips for sales process improvement, including defining strategic goals, selecting target customers and accounts, managing time efficiently, and continuously measuring and improving the process.

1. The Sales Process
Is yours optimized?

2. What if you could:
• Gain more positive control of your selling effort
• Sell more efficiently….total time, time to close
• Reduce your overall cost of closing
• Focus your total resources for selling on getting results
• Improve your success ratio
• Have more confidence in your sales forecasts
• Be better and more efficiently informed about your key
programs
• Have meaningful feedback and real time control of your selling
effort
• Be in a strong position to drive real improvement rather than
simply working harder

3. There is a way forward to a
more productive Selling Effort:
The Opportunity for dramatic
improvement lies in a single
powerful realization:

4. Selling is simply a
Process :
A PROCESS like any other in
your business

5. Selling is a process!
Many of the tools, attitudes, programs
and methods used to manage the
factory can be adapted to administer
the selling process.

6. Create a New Way of Thinking:
• Believe it! Selling is a process like any other
• Your sales process can be mapped and
documented as a series of steps/operations.
• Then steps can be optimized
• Like any other process, selling can be
measured and controlled for results
• Any sales process can be continuously
improved and the results tracked through
measurement

7. Sales Success-
Getting a Good Start:
“You can design the best sales process ever but if
it is aimed the wrong way all you will do is a
perfect job of executing failure.” T. Brown
Successful sales plans flow from well developed
and fully supported strategic planning which
incorporates accurate, detailed market data and
realistic business self assessment:
“You need facts, best thinking, tough minded
realism and vision linked to measurable action.”
T. Brown

8. Successful Selling Starts with well
executed Strategic Planning:
Understand/Define what you want
Define your market and your place in it
Remember that Realism and Accuracy determine quality
Always get the Outside View- avoid your bias
Then plan well-
Facts, thought, realism, and vision linked to measurable
actions for all responsible players.

9. Strategic Planning:
Where will we be active?
One Action Oriented Model -Which Products
-Which Geographic Areas
-Which Core Technologies
-Which Value Creation Stages
-Which Markets
Arenas
What will be our speed and How will we get there?
-Internal development
sequence of moves?
Economic Vehicles -Joint Ventures
-Speed of expansion/growth Staging
Logic -Licensing
-Sequence of initiatives
-Acquisitions
Differentiation
How will we win?
-Image
-Customization
-Price D.C. Hambrick and J.W. Fredrickson,
-Styling (Design) quot;Are You Sure You Have a Strategy?“
How will we obtain our returns? -Reliability
Academy of Management Executive, November 2001.
-Lowest costs due to scale advantage
-lowest costs through scope and replication advantages
-Premium prices due to unmatchable service
-Premium prices due to proprietary product features

10. Sales Planning-
Reduce your Global Strategic View to
Specific Assigned Actions by sorting
downwards: Start with the big Picture
Market Map
Strategic Overlay Run it through your Play Book
Target Market Look at your total “slice”
Target Accounts Decide what you can handle
High Priority Accounts Identify the best pieces
Detailed Account Action Plans Define action
(Sales, Operations ,Development, Management)

11. New /Target Customer Selection-
Pick the right targets and get results by
starting from your strategic plan:
Strategic Fit?
Product Fit
Competition
Resources Required
Profit Potential
Overall Risk

12. Sales Planning and Performance
Toolkit

13. Some Tools and Techniques:
• Overall Sales Process Improvement
• Maximizing Customer Exposure
• Focusing Resources for Results
• Controlling for Results
• Managing the Customer Base

14. Sales is a process-
Improve it!
• Map your existing sales process
• Discover your best practices-what works?
• Eliminate non value added activity
• Optimize your process for results
• Identify and institute meaningful controls
• Create measurements to provide control
feedback
• Continue and Repeat!

15. Time on Target Planning-
Maximize your customer exposure:
• Pick the right sales targets
• Avoid selling distractions…do what wins
• Understand and then optimize your
selling time usage
• Narrowly focus available time on
objectives
• Eliminate non value added activities

16. Manage what you decide to do-
Lower your noise level and improve
results:
• Recognize that resources are limited
• Realize that absent setting priority all
customer demands have equal weight
• Seize the power of saying “no” and use it as
leverage to gain customer commitment
• Demand that everyone think like a business
person.
• Keep you focus on the overall goal

17. Sales Project Management:
“Sales is a process like any other”
• Structure your overall sales project approach- tollgate
system?
• Assign a Leader/Process Owner for each project
• Establish inescapable clear ownership for results.
• Accept that Sales Success is a shared outcome
• Identify the individual tasks- assign and schedule-
interlock objectives
• Regularly Measure Project Progress against goals
• Correct, Adjust and Act!

18. Manage your existing Customer Base-
Analyze and Classify your Customers:
– Strategic Fit
– Size
– Future Potential
– Total Resource Required per Profit $
– Overall Profitability
Only the future has value…..being in love
with history will hold you back.

19. Manage your Customer Base-
Act!:
• Act on what you learn…now!
• Manage account time according to overall
potential
• Eliminate effort on non productive
accounts…..stop and drop.
• Adjust non profitable accounts
• Stop other effort where it doesn’t advance
the sale
• Adjust your sales method to the situation

20. There are hundreds of
other ways forward to Sales
Improvement if you remember:
Selling is simply a Process :
A PROCESS like any other in your business- -
Understand, Measure, Control, Improve
and
Succeed $$.

21. The Sales Process
Is yours optimized?
About the Author:
Tim Brown is the Managing Partner of Brevis Consulting; a firm that helps
mid-sized companies improve their results. In his thirty years of senior level
management experience he has led organizations in North America, Asia and
Europe as General Manager, Senior VP of Marketing and Sales, National
Marketing Manager, Business Unit Manager and Product Manager in several
successful global mid-sized businesses. He can be reached by calling +1 (508)
758-2441 or sending e-mail to tbrown@brevisconsult.com .
© 2006 BREVIS Consulting www.brevisconsult.com