Sales Optimization with Vocational Qualifications

Raising Standards - Winning Business!

Whether you like it or not, sales is a strategic and indispensable resource for most businesses. It is the vanguard for all business initiatives and the connection between what you provide and what your customers need.

Most organisations are struggling to build, maintain and develop an effective and dynamic sales capability to meet the rapid and ever changing business world. They rely on the Sales and HR Directors to address skills, capability, recruitment, performance improvement, profitability and change. But are they getting it right and can sales functions be better aligned to longer term planning, strategy and business processes?

Selling is so much about people, personality and money than products, processes and systems. Or is it? If the principles of matching resources to need, aligning capability to requirement and solutions to problems are applied, successful sales outcomes can be made more manageable and predictable.

Ergon, the official launch partner to City and Guilds in support of the new National Vocational Qualifications in Sales, Telesales and Sales Management, and as members of the National Steering Committee of the MSSSB (Marketing & Sales Standards Setting Body – www.msssb.org), work with major ‘blue-chip’ organisations to help them deploy and gain real business benefit from the new National Standards for Sales, and the NVQ qualifications.

We provide a holistic approach to delivering the financial plan through the sales force - we call it Sales Force Optimization (SFO). This consists of a number of service elements following formal business processes, aligned to corporate strategy. You can choose one, several or all elements depending on your circumstances and needs, knowing each will help you raise standards and win more business.

Delivering the Financial Plan

1. Connecting Sales to the Financial Plan

Your financial plan is the route map that all other functions must follow, especially sales. This takes the form of revenue and gross margin, plus product mix and budget to finance the sales operation. The sales director is usually seen as optimistic cum over-confident, but the head of finance is the eternal pessimist. Ergon helps ensure that the human sales resources match those required by the financial targets, by providing a realistic representation of the sales force’s ability to deliver the financial plan through a risk and readiness report.

2. Performance Drivers for Sales

Performance Drivers or Enabling Objectives are used to convert/interpret the financial plan into the sales plan. These are the sales team and individual performance objectives represented as “sales targets/objectives/quota”. They can include revenue, gross margin, product mix, annually, quarterly and monthly. They can be further broken down to number of named companies to sell to, sector companies to sell to, cold calls, face-to-face meetings, presentations, proposals, booked revenue, cash collection etc. Ergon helps align sales force capability with performance metrics and professional certification.

3. Sales Process Mapping

What sales processes, activities and tasks are in place to achieve the organisation’s objectives? How are these defined to enable the sales force to deliver them? Does the language used to define sales roles map to the processes? Ergon undertakes analysis of sales processes, activities and tasks, mapped to sales roles so that no important element is overlooked or excluded. We further ensure that learning needs analysis produces individual learning plans that represent the real requirement, not driven by training products available.

4. Sales Automation Management

Most sales departments are provided with many tools and systems to help them follow due process and achieve success. These include CRM, sales automation, proposal automation, workflow management etc. But do these tools operate independently or in a cohesive manner? Do sales incumbents have the skills, knowledge and experience to use them? Using our unique Sales Skills Framework as the connection between all sales functions, we provide a sales process management service/solution to ensure this. This means that the your investment in sales automation is protected and the effectiveness of the tools achieved.

5. Sales Role Profiling

To connect sales to the financial plan and deliver this through KPIs, the members of the sales team require the necessary skills, experience, knowledge and behavioural competencies. This means that role profiles must be created directly from the financial plan and performance metrics. To do this in a consistent, coherent and simple way, Ergon uses its unique Sales Skills Framework, derived from the National Occupation Standards for Sales and Marketing, but adapted to each client’s specific situation, market and sales processes. Aligning role profiles to National Standards facilitates measurement against professional certification.

6. Sales Capability Appraisals

Are your sales people capable of delivering your business plan? How will you know until it is too late? Ergon’s Sales Appraiser significantly improves productivity and profitability of sales resources by connecting them with the financial plan and key performance indicators through sales role profiles. It improves overall performance by helping ensure that sales people and their managers are properly skilled. It dramatically improves impact of related training by ensuring it is directly relevant to performance improvement required and is connected to the sales manager /sales person relationship through the appraisal process. Training is not a stand-alone activity, but is integrated with required performance, and it can underpin all the above by linking performance achievement with professional certification and academic qualifications.

7. Converting Sales Managers to Sales Coaches

The traditional role of sales manager has not changed for decades: “to drive sales people to achieve their targets.” But in the modern and enlightened sales force, being “driven” to be successful is a real turn-off, like Dad telling you that you can’t stay out late. Coaches, mentors and personal skills trainers are the titles given to the modern manager but without adequate train-the-coach development, how are sales managers going to make this move? Ergon provides a service that identifies individual coaching needs, provides a train-the-coach development programme with post training follow up to help ensure that the required skills have been acquired and are used correctly.

8. Sales Training and Development Optimization

Training for its own sake is generally wasteful and expensive. Taking your sales soldiers out of the front-line must add value. Training and development in sales must only emanate from what is required to bring the individual to the level required for successful achievement of objectives. Therefore optimizing training to achieve the financial plan and performance metrics through their role profiles and the appraisal process will provide the gap analysis and elements to be addressed. This produces a systematic, realistic and justifiable approach to training, involving the sales person, their manager, company processes and budget.

9. Recruitment Selection in Sales

Getting the right sales person has never been more important. Sales-Selector is a sales role suitability analysis service with browser solution. It provides fast, efficient and objective skills assessment, selection and resource management. The foundation of our service is “self-profiling with confirmation” against the skills, knowledge and competence (technical, functional and behavioural) required for your specific sales role. Management or consultancy provides the confirmation (interview, testing, psychometrics etc), producing a detailed individual assessment with gap analysis from which hiring decisions are made. The individual training plan automatically generated from the gap analysis enables hiring decisions to be made on ‘near fit’ candidates based on a review of the cost/benefit of their further training.

10. City and Guilds Sales Qualifications and Accreditation

The achievement of sales qualifications is as motivating as the achievement of personal sales targets. Motivation for the individual includes recognition, personal success, job security and money, but embracing professional qualifications for the corporation means improved capability, and strong connection between skills development and successfully delivering the business plan. Studies show that training and development without the rigor and structure of qualifications is up to four times less effective.

Working closely with City and Guilds, Ergon has developed a number of tools that enable both organisations and individuals to establish their current skill level in relation to the range of qualifications; develop development plans for their achievement; and assessment systems for ‘fit for purpose’ verification - driving professional standards and business success. The vocational nature of NVQs mean that on-going assessment in the workplace reinforces development, recognizes previous experience, and means that skills development spend is immediately translated into measurable business performance improvement.