Hari wondered how he could get his team to go beyond ‘order taking’ and ‘conversion’ for today, to ‘opportunity creation’ for tomorrow. He knew what gets measured gets managed. How? He wasn’t clear!

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3 Fundamental challenges in managing sales efforts to create new opportunities 

Are you one of those sales managers who never experienced “end of period” blues? Most sales managers are not so lucky. Nor are quarterly, midyear and annual reviews, eagerly awaited events. Sales reviews often end with a rhetorical question that goes unanswered – “Why are all those long hours and big money we invested not showing up on the sales graph?” There are three fundamental challenges in managing sales efforts  

1. 1. Analysing and monitoring sales efforts is not easy – In a manufacturing unit, for a given input of raw materials, run through a predefined process you can almost always predict the quantum of output with certainty.  If only sales could be managed like that! 

1. 2. Opportunity creation has to become part of Salesperson’s efforts - Heinz Goldmann, the founder of Mercuri International, described a Salesperson as one who can “make a sale happen when there would have been none without him or her”. Recent surveys on the future of sales warn that ‘order takers’ and ‘explainers’ will dinosaur. Heinz Goldmann said it 5 decades ago.  

1. 3. Sales effort should focus on building Customer base for future - Sales efforts should include building a Customer base for future results, rather than merely create opportunities for today, and serve firmed up enquiries received from Customers.  This calls for managing Customers and opportunities – together. 

Do you have the right tool for it? 

Does the tool you use – Sales Funnel, Hot/Cold/Warm classification or a good sales automation CRM, help you to do the above? If you couldn’t say a firm ‘Yes’, that brings up the critical gap in your management of sales effort. 

Mercuri’s Sales Platform™

Mercuri offers a tool for salespeople to overcome these challenges Just as an oil exploration platform or a satellite launch platform are places where all resources converge to strike and mine oil or execute a perfect lift off, the Mercuri Sales Platform™ is where all efforts converge to explore, identify and extract the potential opportunity available in an industry. 

To this end, the Sales Platform™ breaks down your Customer base into 4 categories: 

1. Universe of Prospects - Comprising all potential Customers identified for targeting 
2. Market Platform – Defined prospects not yet really worked upon – attraction, creation.
3. Working Platform – Worked on prospects not yet buying – conversion.
4. Buying Platform – Buying customers 

Putting it to practice – The How  

Group and manage prospects and Customers basis their interest in us – Using the Sales Platform™ divide the pipeline of prospects and Customers into six blocks, on the basis of how interested they are. It now captures the sales life cycle in a way that helps us as Sales People to stay focused on where we should direct our sales efforts 

Prospects and Customers in the 4 coloured blocks should be managed proactively. It is in these blocks that today’s sales efforts and activities will yield tomorrow’s results and new opportunities will emerge.

Master Class Takeaway

Managing sales efforts using the Sales Platform™ tool will give you the following advantages

1. You will understand the pipeline better - – This framework brings visibility to sales efforts. It makes it possible to measure efforts from ‘creating an opportunity’ to ‘converting an opportunity into an order’.  
2. Monitoring becomes stage specific -- Sales Platform™ helps in monitoring the number of Customers in each of the four categories or ‘boxes’ at any point of time
3. Sales efforts are optimised - Monitoring the Sales Platform on real time basis periodically, say every week, can help you optimally channel the direction of your sales efforts. The number and type of sales visits, proposals and follow up and reference management can all be optimally chosen today to create results for the future. 

For Reflection

What would be your advice to Hari to help him manage his team’s efforts better? 

For more ideas on effective ways to manage sales efforts for new opportunity generation, explore the Mercuri Insight document on ‘Are you building your platform for the future?’  here