By ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas
Many services and technology companies use SAS #70 to assure proper procedures and quality. Sarbanes-Oxley came out of Congress to prevent fraud and mismanagement of businesses. There’s also the Malcolm Baldridge Award.
It’s interesting, however, that the function or organization that is closest to revenue, drives the forecast and interacts with your customers and prospects daily has the least amount of controls over quality and standard processes. It has been thought for centuries that sales is an “art” and controls over sales were unmanageable. This simply is just not the case.
The funny thing is that companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bring in sales process, sales training, sales definition and sales methodology. While they have spent hundreds of millions on technology like customer relationship management (CRM), they have not put any controls in place to get the most out of the investments they have made in the sales function.
Quality controls around sales are non-existent or are tracked via spreadsheets and delivered ad hoc to sales management.
There is no inspection or controls around sales. Sales management is allowed to run their portion of the business as they see fit without following corporate standards or objectives. Gut-based management prevails all too often with each manager having his or her own take on how to manage the team and each setting their own pace and process.
That’s why the 80/20 rule is allowed to fester. It’s allowed to be the norm. It’s why companies are missing budgets and quotas. It’s why turnover is high. It’s why sales teams are missing goals over and over. There is no quality assurance at the sales level. It’s time that is fixed.
The definition of quality assurance as noted by several authorities on the topic is “any systematic process of checking to see whether a product, service or employee is meeting specified requirements”. While many companies have a separate department devoted to quality assurance, they don’t touch sales.
A quality assurance system is said to increase customer confidence and a company’s credibility to improve work processes and efficiency and to enable a company to better compete with others. Today’s quality assurance systems emphasize catching defects before they get into final production. Companies, though, often don’t even think to use this approach with their sales department.
The same holds true for salespeople and sales management. Ongoing checks to see whether a salesperson or a sales manager is performing up to company standards must be done daily to assure they are delivering the company marketing message properly and to ensure they are doing the work necessary that will lead to more sales and ultimately profit.
ISO 9000 was created as the international standard that many companies use to ensure that their quality assurance system is in place and effective. It is very common in manufacturing environments.
Like ISO 9000, SAS 70 is a widely recognized auditing standard that service and technology organizations often use as an in-depth audit of their control objectives and control activities. This often includes controls over information technology and related processes.
For sales, there is not yet a specific named process for tracking, monitoring, measuring, reviewing, ranking and coaching salespeople and sales management to achieve the highest-possible results within your sales department.
However, companies are recognizing that – very much like the service or manufacturing aspects of their business – sales needs to be better controlled for a better output. Companies such as Lenovo, Motorola, Savvis and many others have figured this out.
In deploying a quality assurance process in your sales function, you need to consider the four steps that are standard within industry. They are often referred to as the PDCA model. This stands for:
- Plan: Establish objectives and processes required to deliver the desired results
- Do: Implement the process developed
- Check: Monitor and evaluate the implemented process by testing the results against the pre-determined objectives
- Act: Apply actions necessary for improvement if the results require changes (i.e. coach)
The PDCA model is an effective method for monitoring quality assurance because it analyzes existing conditions and methods used to provide the product or service customers. The same holds true to the process of selling with the goal being to ensure that excellence is inherent in every component of the sales process.
Deploying such a process demands a degree of detail in order to be fully implemented at every step. It requires technology to support the process as using spreadsheets is just too difficult. “Planning,” for example, could include laying out the sales strategy or methodology and tools identified to support.
“Doing” is the daily or weekly execution from the planning stage. This includes investigation into the quality of the sales call or activity. The “checking” step could include tracking the proper leading and lagging indicators or customer feedback to determine if not only financial goals are being met or exceeded but leading indicators are being tracked and why they are or are not be met.
“Acting” in a sales environment means coaching the salesperson to teach him or her the proper process in order to correct a technical or intrinsic flaw.
The original intended thought behind quality control emphasized testing and blocking the release of defective products. Quality assurance for sales is about improving and stabilizing the sales team to avoid or at least minimize issues that led to the defective salesperson in the first place.
Consistent data recording and assessment of leading indicators leads to sales integrity. If the processes, methodologies or specifications don’t reflect the true quality requirements for the sales team, the end result can’t be guaranteed.
Widespread awareness of sales quality issues and tracking throughout the organization increases the probability that sales quality or production will be taken into account at every stage of the sales process. A sales quality approach across the company places an emphasis on four aspects:
- Elements such as controls, sales management, adequate processes, performance and integrity criteria as well as identification of key performance indicators.
- Competence such as knowledge, skills, experience and qualifications
- Soft elements such as personnel integrity, confidence, organizational culture, motivation, team spirit and quality relationships
- Supporting technology such as CRM or performance management tools.
The quality of the outputs is at risk if any of these aspects is deficient in any way. By applying a process to measure the inputs as well as throughputs or key performance indicators to revenue, your company will see significant returns to top and bottom line.
Patrick Stakenas is president and CEO ForceLogix, which is a Chicago-based company that builds on-demand sales performance management solutions.