Activity v Results
I've been talking recently to a company about sales culture, and we talked about the consequences of focusing on activity versus results.
Constant evolution means always finding better, faster or more efficient ways to reach the goal. The alternative is that you carry on doing what you know how to do, and after a while the rest of the world overtakes you. If you're lucky, you'll lurch from one massive culture change program to the next as you run to catch up. If you're unlucky, the market environment will select you out.
I say we choose our own luck.
A focus on results relies absolutely on a management culture that trusts individual excellence. It relies on very clear direction from the top. It relies on the business having a clearly communicated strategy.
A focus on activity relies on getting everyone doing the same things, because the systems and processes are valued more highly than the abilities of the sales people. The activity focus compensates for variations and changes in sales teams by making sure everyone does the same thing, regardless of their individual experience or potential. At one of the spectrum, we have volume B2C sales such as home improvement and financial products, where the high turnover of staff means that it's easier to systemise the sales approach, even down to having a scripted sales call. At the other end of the spectrum, when selling regulated products, the organisation clearly has to make sure that all the sales people stick within those regulations.
A large telecoms company I worked for focused on activity. Although account managers had sales targets, those targets were wrapped up in pay plans that were so complicated and changed so frequently that people were never actually paid against plan but instead against subjective decisions of who had been a good chap and kept his/her customers happy, so the account managers were actually paid to be service managers, contrary to the pay plan.
Another IT company I worked for had an interesting culture; focus on activity but measurement by results. So the sales managers wanted to see everything the sales people were doing to make sure they were doing it right, but they held people accountable to results. Do you see the problem? The sales people aren't in control of what they do to achieve the results they are paid on, whereas the sales managers aren't in control of the results they're trying to dictate activity for. The result was that sales people always looked busy, but many of them were working on deals that were never going to close, because it was easier to follow the rules and look busy than to break the rules and risk not hitting target. Do you follow? I am certain I can do what my manager tells me to do, even if it doesn't result in a deal. I am not certain I can break the rules and win the deal by myself. Therefore if I follow the rules it's less risk to me, and if I miss target at least I did what I was told. The overall management culture at the company was "If I can see you then you must be working".
If you want to track what your sales people are doing by making sure they follow a prescribed process then training a rigid sales system is the answer. This is common in activity focused sales cultures, where the management strategy is "if we make sure people do the right things in the right order then they will get the right results".
A focus on activity relies on getting everyone doing the same things, because the systems and processes are valued more highly than the abilities of the sales people. The activity focus compensates for variations and changes in sales teams by making sure everyone does the same thing, regardless of their individual experience or potential. At one of the spectrum, we have volume B2C sales such as home improvement and financial products, where the high turnover of staff means that it's easier to systemise the sales approach, even down to having a scripted sales call. At the other end of the spectrum, when selling regulated products, the organisation clearly has to make sure that all the sales people stick within those regulations.
A large telecoms company I worked for focused on activity. Although account managers had sales targets, those targets were wrapped up in pay plans that were so complicated and changed so frequently that people were never actually paid against plan but instead against subjective decisions of who had been a good chap and kept his/her customers happy, so the account managers were actually paid to be service managers, contrary to the pay plan.
Another IT company I worked for had an interesting culture; focus on activity but measurement by results. So the sales managers wanted to see everything the sales people were doing to make sure they were doing it right, but they held people accountable to results. Do you see the problem? The sales people aren't in control of what they do to achieve the results they are paid on, whereas the sales managers aren't in control of the results they're trying to dictate activity for. The result was that sales people always looked busy, but many of them were working on deals that were never going to close, because it was easier to follow the rules and look busy than to break the rules and risk not hitting target. Do you follow? I am certain I can do what my manager tells me to do, even if it doesn't result in a deal. I am not certain I can break the rules and win the deal by myself. Therefore if I follow the rules it's less risk to me, and if I miss target at least I did what I was told. The overall management culture at the company was "If I can see you then you must be working".
If you want to track what your sales people are doing by making sure they follow a prescribed process then training a rigid sales system is the answer. This is common in activity focused sales cultures, where the management strategy is "if we make sure people do the right things in the right order then they will get the right results".
The alternative that we are proposing is a focus on results all the way through the organisation, so the management strategy becomes "if we focus people on the right results, they will do the right things in the right order".
We can add another layer to this which is the rare opportunity to build a culture, so the strategy becomes "if we build the right culture then the right people will do the right things, delivering the results we want", and that 'right culture' includes the results focus.
Of course, this isn't a rigid and exclusive focus; more of a bias that impacts on strategy, qualification, resource allocation, measurement, reward and recognition etc.
I'm not here to tell you which is right for you; I can only tell you what the consequences of each approach are. Personally, I favour a results focus, but it does have consequences for the way you manage and motivate the sales people. I think that an activity focus works better in other sales environments where there are fewer variables in the sales process. If you want your people to be able to navigate around obstacles, they have to know where they're going and that they are allowed to make changes to the route they take.
As you'll see from our website, our approach includes modelling excellence in your organisation and using that as a foundation for development programs, so we preserve the high performing behaviours of your own culture. The alternative is that off the shelf training programs, no matter how good they look, will always introduce elements of alien culture that will ultimately be rejected.
Therefore another consequence of our methodology is constant evolution in pursuit of excellence. This is ideal for a results focused organisation, but not ideal for an organisation that likes things done a certain way and only that way.
As you'll see from our website, our approach includes modelling excellence in your organisation and using that as a foundation for development programs, so we preserve the high performing behaviours of your own culture. The alternative is that off the shelf training programs, no matter how good they look, will always introduce elements of alien culture that will ultimately be rejected.
Therefore another consequence of our methodology is constant evolution in pursuit of excellence. This is ideal for a results focused organisation, but not ideal for an organisation that likes things done a certain way and only that way.
I say we choose our own luck.
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