Process Management in Sales

“Companies with more developed sales processes enjoy greater sales performance”, say Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana in their book entitled Cracking the Sales Management Code. They argue that sales managers need a set of formal business processes. Other business functions like manufacturing or finance have formal business processes in place that allow for consistent execution and robust measurement of the activities. This visibility is required in order to exercise control and continuously improve. In the absence of standardized processes to enable active management, sales managers often have unmanageable chaos rather than “command” over their sales force. The authors further argue that every sales force should customize its sales processes to the way it does business, but it should not be responsible for defining what sales processes are. Here is an overview of the fundamental sales processes:

  • Call Management: Planning and conducting individual customer interactions.
  • Opportunity Management: Strategically navigating a multi-call sales cycle.
  • Account Management: Maximizing long-term value from a single customer.
  • Territory Management: Allocating effort efficiently across different types of customers.
  • Sales Force Enablement: Investing in improved sales force execution.

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