What you should consider before you offer a training class to your Sales Team

In many cases Teams like the Sales Operations Team, Product Management Team, Product Marketing Team, Order Management Team etc. would like to train the Sales Team on various processes and tools. This can be a costly engagement from a Sales Team point of view (e.g. just think how many Sales Reps you want to train and how much time that will take and the impact on the Sales Quota ... while the Sales Reps are trained they can't make any Sales Quota and this makes it harder for the Sales Management Team to agree to these training sessions). In order to make it easier for Sales Executives to actively support this training I suggest to look at the following.

• Have data available that shows that a training is appropriate 
• This should show some information on how the Sales Reps spend their time. You could get this Information from a Sales Productivity Survey or by working with representative Sales Teams directly. A Key point here is to see what is industry average (you probably need a consulting company to help on this) and how much time your Sales Team spends on this task. If you have several Sales Teams in different parts of the world you should break this up by regions. Below I show some examples
• Customer Facing Time
• Travel to customer site
• Sales Meetings
• Prepare Sales Meetings
• Networking meetings / Relationship building
• Non-Customer Facing Time (could be sales related or non-sales related)
• Special Pricing requests
• Deal Approval Process
• Product Configuration and quoting
• Customer Research
• Account Planning
• Internal meetings and email (e.g. for non-sales related activities)
• Training
• Internal Reporting
• Know exactly what you want to improve, why you want to improve it and what the expected outcome is
• See the list above and determine what you can achieve by when and who needs to support this training effort
• Determine who needs to attend the training
• Should the whole Sales Team (e.g. Field Sales, internal Sales Rep) attend this training?
• Should you potentially create a questionnaire with different topic areas to determine who needs to attend a training and who doesn't? Example: You can ask 5 questions in the Order Management Area and if a Sales Team Member answers 4 questions or more correct then they don't need to participate in the training. Note: If you use a questionnaire ensure the questionnaire is as short as possible to ensure you are not wasting everyone's time. Also think about how you want to enforce the completion of this questionnaire. Suggestion is to have the questionnaire no longer than 30min.  In any case before you use this questionnaire you need to discuss this proposal with the Sales Executive Team. A questionnaire might help convince the Sales Management Team to do a training when you can show that it won't waste time.
• Determine how you will measure the success of this training
• Should be done before you present to the Sales Management Team
• Ensure that all instructors are available and handle the training as a priority
• Ensure you have Executive Sponsorship for your suggested Training
• Not everyone in the Sales Team will be eager to do this training and hence you should ensure you have the Why, What, When, Where, Who and How questions well thought through before you have this discussion
• Measure the results and share with the Sales Management Team and the Sales Executive Team

How to select a Product Configurator ? High Level Overview

When you select a new Product Configuration Tool many things need to be taken into account. Below I show some key points that you might want to keep in mind when your company tries to introduce a new tool. In any case it is a good idea to involve a Consulting Company that has deep experience with this process and can help you circumvent some pitfalls.

Steps
1. Determine Business and IT Requirements
    Keep the following in mind

• How will the Product Configurator be used? (e.g. only for internal Sales Reps or on the internet or ... ?)
• What capabilities do you need? (e.g. guided selling, proposed configuration solutions, install based information during product configuration)
• Do you focus on the Sales Configurator (used in the Sales Process), Product Configurator (used in the Manufacturing and Delivery Process) or on the Support part of the Configurator (used to manage installed based information). 
• How will the Product Configuration Tool be integrated into the ERP environment?
• What Pricing requirements do you have? .. and how will they work with the new tool? (e.g. Is something like the SAP Variant Pricing needed?). How will the new tool integrate with your pricing data?
• How will Product Life Cycle changes impact the new tool? 
• What is the Change Management Process when changes occur?

2. Prioritize requirements from 1.

• Keep in mind where the Product Configuration work is expected to occur (on-site or offshore)
• How quick do you need to implement changes (e.g. within 2 hours or within a week) ?

3. Agree on evaluation criteria

• This is a KEY area that should be addressed before you look at any tools. That way you have more objective criteria
• Also ensure that both IT and Business stakeholders are involved in determining these criteria
• User Stories might help to flesh out which criteria are most important (Business stakeholders should provide these User Stories)

4. Determine potential Vendors

• There are many vendors out there. So keep the list manageable (not more than 5 potential vendors if possible)

5. Have vendors demo their solution to your team
    Notes:

• Ensure that Business and IT Stakeholders are at this meeting
• You should provide the vendor a a script that they should follow to ensure all evaluation criteria are considered.
• Remember that YOU should control this meeting NOT THE VENDOR!

6. Score each vendor (after demo)

• This should be done by Business and IT Stakeholders directly after the demo meeting to ensure that you don't forget anything. Instead of doing this in a group you might want to ask every participant to score it for themselves first and then come up with a group scoring.

Note: Depending on the maturity of your company this process can take from 4-6 weeks to whatever. Since this tool will be really important going forward (e.g. your sales team will interface with it on a regular basis, your customers will use it on the Internet regularly) you should take as much time as needed to make the right decision instead of rushing to a decision. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

Do you use KPI's (sometimes also called "metrics") ? If yes, why?

I see the following two reasons to use KPI's :

1. Instead of making decisions based on instinct you want to make decisions based on facts
2. Set goals in order to monitor and measure against a target

What KPI's you use depends on the area you are working in (see below for some examples). For Software Development you will have different KPI's than for the Sales Team or for the Project Management Team.

In any case it is important that you agree on a set of KPIs that you want to monitor. This direction should come from the Senior Management Team since they set the goals of the company. The first step is to have clear goals. The KPI's then serve as a compass to tell you (and most importantly the Senior Management Team) if you are on or off track. 

Here are some tips you might want to take into account (based on my experience) before you set any KPI's

• Ensure your Senior Management Team (in all regions) is actively supporting the capture of your KPIs
• There should be a regular review of KPI's with the Senior Management Team
• Ensure that everyone understands that you (and the Senior Management Team) want to use the KPI's to keep the team on track and aligned to your common goal
• Otherwise there is a risk that different teams are comparing themselves against each other and losing sight of the common objective. While some rivalry is good it is important to ensure this only happens if that brings you (the company) closer to that goal.
• Talk to every (regional) leader separately to explain what is measured, why it is measured and how you intent to measure it. It is important to have a high degree of buy-in from these leaders because otherwise the risk is too high that the KPI's get 'manufactured' to show better than actual results
• Our objective is to reach our goal, NOT to make team A look good and Team B look bad
• Ensure you have KPI's that are understood by all impacted teams
• Ensure the KPI's are aligned to the major goals in your area (only measure what is really important to you!)
• Think if you really need 100 PowerPoints to review the KPI's in your area. If they are supposed to be meaningful less is probably more.
• Clearly identify WHAT is measured (and ensure that all regions are able to measure this in the same way)
• Agree WHEN the measurement starts and ends
• Agree HOW the measurement is performed (e.g. live of via a report)
• Agree if the results will be published and who will see the results first

There are many books about KPI's and the above is a huge simplification BUT in order to make them work for your team (depending on the maturity of the team) I think a simplification helps to get better results.

Here are some interesting examples for various KPI's

• Business Analysis/Project Management KPI's
• Management KPI's
• Sales KPI's

Be the leader everyone writes or talks about

Happy New Year to everyone! 

Especially at this time of year there seem to be a considerable number of lists that talk about what to do and what not to do in the new year. Many of these lists talk about leadership.  While I  think leadership is really important I think there is more talk about it than action or to put it differently the word is simply overused. 

Check Amazon for "Leadership" (~110,000 books found) and "Management" (~892,000 books found) and you see there is no lack of  advise. But reading a book (assuming it's a good book) doesn't mean you truly understand and apply the knowledge from the book. 

What are you planning to do to show that you are a leader in 2014?

I suggest you go and own a real (business) problem from beginning to end! If you already work on a critical program or project make it clear to everyone that the success of the program or project is something you own. 

This means to clearly identity an issue in your environment. Ensure that this is a real issue and not just something you like to work on. Don't wait for someone to empower you to own the problem but actively identify the issue and make it your issue. Many people like to wait until a problem is assigned to them. Don't fall into this trap in 2014 and instead be the "leader" by grabbing the issue by the horns and own it. In many cases you will be successful "only" by acting instead of talking or waiting for someone to assign the issue to you. So go and be the leader others talk about in 2014!