Audit Your Sales System to Sell Better Faster

As many businesses and sales leaders look to finalise their business strategies, sales and training budgets for FY 2023-24, they are likely putting their minds on how to help their sales and client-facing teams improve productivity and performance, customer service standards, sales pipeline, attraction and retention of the right kinds of clients, their competitiveness, profitability, revenue, and so on.

Often their minds will drift to some form of sales training to improve sales. And sure, the right kind of sales training is essential to stay sales fit and deliver sales results; however, many businesses and sales leaders miss the opportunity to fully assess the health of their sales system to determine what really needs addressing. Sales training is not the only area that we need to consider when it comes to selling better.

Why?

Sometimes, other departments are putting your sales effort at risk. For example, here are some real-life issues uncovered when we undertook sales system audits in clients’ businesses:

• Credit department’s parameters were unnecessarily too tight, so good deals weren’t getting approved
• Marketing wasn’t aligned with the right sales segments so there was poor or no client conversion
• Salespeople were being drawn into distribution and becoming glorified delivery people
• Operations didn’t want to take on more work so refused any new sales from the sales team
• HR knocked back perfectly good salespeople because they were ‘too sales focused’

I could go on, but you get the gist. If any part of your sales system is out of whack – think no clear sales strategy, no or poorly defined selling-buying-service processes, no compelling value proposition, no sales leadership standards, no KPIs, poor customer culture, lack of support from the broader business, etc. – no amount of sales training will fix the issues of sales performance.

A Sales System Review enables a business to audit and benchmark its sales system and operations and then develop and implement focused sales strategies, build robust sales processes, and develop sales teams and cultures that sell better faster now and sustainably into the future. It asses a range of areas, including:

• All elements of sales strategy and its current effectiveness, gaps, and limitations
• Alignment or lack thereof of sales processes and sales team structure to the strategy
• Relevant market and customer segments, and value proposition effectiveness
• The current configuration of the sales operation and its effect on sales results
• The current level of sales integration across the business value chain and how each business area impacts sales performance and customer satisfaction

A Sales System allows everyone, especially leadership and sales teams, to speak the same language with unified sales messaging and a unique value proposition, understanding what strategies and tactics need to be applied in the marketplace.

Taking this approach will provide the essential sales knowledge and human-centred framework needed to lead and manage sales teams and operations effectively and execute focused go-to-market strategies.

Adopting a sales system approach leads to successful, human-centred, collaborative sales teams and business cultures that attract and retain more of the clients and employees you want and where selling is proudly everybody’s business.

This is what two of the leaders from businesses who have conducted Sales Systems reviews had to say:

The change has been outstanding. Two years ago (Nov 2017) I couldn’t have imagined that Sales would be in such great shape already. I thought it would’ve taken years but here we are now with a fantastic sales team, sales infrastructure and processes, strategy and culture that is growing and making a huge difference to our business and our clients. As an accountant, I knew very little about sales, but Barrett’s Sales Strategy & Operations Framework and the Barrett team have steered us in the right direction. Executive General Manager publicly listed $4B Retail & Wholesale Healthcare business.

The Rural Muster project has taken the lead in facilitating a complete culture and mindset shift across the entire organisation to improve the customer experience and lift sales. In addition, I lead a competent sales leadership team who are coaching and leading from the front, and we have an outstanding sales score card. Barrett has provided us with robust sales systems, tools, resources and ongoing education to give us the ability to innovate, navigate and grow our business for the short, medium and long term. Head of Sales, Agri-Business Banking.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, founder and MD of Barrett

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