CHAPTER 9
Mission Accomplished

IN REFLECTION

As we prepared to write this book, we looked back at the many iterations of analyses and frameworks we had developed en route to the content you’ve just read. In reflection, it was truly difficult to crack the sales management code. This is partly because we were handed some early red herrings but mostly because it was just plain hard—much harder, in fact, than we had expected it to be.

We naively began the effort thinking that it would be a survey of existing best practices. If we studied the measurement strategies of large, evolved sales forces, surely the code would reveal itself. But we quickly discovered that even the most sophisticated organizations had not found an intuitive way to organize their sales metrics. Though there were many common metrics across the companies we surveyed, they were arranged as randomly as a dropped box of toothpicks. Numbers here, numbers there, numbers everywhere. It was sales metric chaos.

More discouraging, none of the different approaches to sales force measurement seemed to provide a useful framework for management. There was no sense of hierarchy or cause-and-effect relationships that would imply a deliberate approach to “managing” the numbers. There were simply various collections of metrics that were of interest to somebody for some reason. In short, our quick survey of sales measurement best practices was not as revealing as we had hoped. In the absence of any clear best practices, we decided that we’d have to chart our own course through the metrics morass. So the dozens of reports on our wall exploded into 306 individual data points just waiting for a guiding hand.

The guiding hand was, of course, The Question, Can we “manage” this metric? Wrestling with this question brought us to our first real breakthrough, separating Sales Objectives from Sales Activities. But there were more challenges to come. Next, the sales pipeline metrics nearly put us in the grave. Then the compound metrics. Then mapping Activities to processes. Then assigning processes to roles. Then linking processes to Objectives. At every turn, there was some complexity that forced us to walk away for a few days, clear our heads, and then return with a fresh perspective. Two steps forward, one step back. And sometimes two or three steps back.

But here we are. Our work is done. The code is cracked, and the first set of operating instructions for the sales force has been written. We now know that we can predictably control sales performance by directly managing Sales Activities, which influence Sales Objectives, which drive Business Results. The key is to determine the causal chain of Activities and Objectives that will lead you most surely to your desired Results. Where there was once chaos on our war room wall, there is now a refreshing sense of order. Finally, our mission had been accomplished.

THE ULTIMATE STATUS CHECK

After such prolonged and bloody battle with a bunch of numbers on a conference room wall, we think anyone would feel compelled to put the victory in perspective. Did we win a major war or merely a tiny skirmish? What does the world know now that it didn’t know 306 random metrics ago? Or stated more bluntly, what did we really accomplish?

We connected sales force activities to organizational results.

At first glance, this statement makes the contribution seem unremarkable. Salespeople have been engaged in “activities” more than a century, while organizations have been recognizing “results” for even longer. And we’ve always inherently known that there is a connection between the two. Is it really a big deal to have deciphered the relationship between activities and results? We think so, and we’ll provide you with a final story to illustrate why.

One of our current clients is a very successful global company. It dominates almost all of its markets, and it has dominated many of them for more than a hundred years. The company is routinely found on the “most admired” lists of global organizations, largely because of its commitment to developing world-class management. Its managers are very smart and focused, and they run every aspect of their business with great rigor, including their sales forces. We tell you this to make the point that they don’t miss the obvious things. If they find that something is broken, they will deploy a team of experts to fix it. Fast. Continuous improvement is in their blood, and known problems don’t exist for long.

During the course of a recent project, we interviewed our client’s senior leaders to understand where they perceived there to be the biggest opportunities for improvement in their sales manager’s capabilities. We concluded each interview with a straightforward, open-ended question: what skills would you most like to see improved in your sales managers? Here are literal, word-for-word responses from several conversations our team had over the past few weeks:

“Our managers need to do a better job of linking the activities of their salespeople to our overall organizational goals.”

“They need to be better at managing the right activities.”

“My managers need to help their salespeople focus on the things that matter.”

“They need to be better about focusing salespeople on the critical few things they can do to impact results.”

From these quotes, it’s clear that this company’s leadership recognizes the fact that its salespeople’s activities drive its organization’s results. It’s also clear that it expects its managers to focus their sellers on the right activities to attain those results. Company executives don’t want their managers to simply scream “Charge!” and then push their salespeople to work harder. They expect them to skillfully direct the action on the battlefield. They expect them to be proactive sales managers.

Obviously, they wanted their managers to do the exact thing that this book describes: direct the Sales Activities that will predictably produce their Business Results. But they weren’t doing it. They weren’t guiding their salespeople’s activities surely toward their organizational goals. And it was such a significant problem that several different leaders named it as their managers’ biggest skill deficit. For a company such as this, it was a pretty persistent point of failure.

So why would a company full of smart, motivated problem solvers tolerate this glaring and widespread issue with its sales managers? There’s only one reason: it didn’t know how to fix it. If it did, it would have long ago incorporated that knowledge into its sales manager training programs. It would have fixed the problem fast and forever. But instead, it remained an obvious problem without a known solution. The company’s leadership didn’t know how to teach their managers to connect specific activities to desired results because the body of knowledge didn’t exist.

This is not the only time we’ve heard leaders complain about their sales force’s inability to connect field-level activities to overall outcomes—it’s just the most recent. This problem is prevalent, and we suspect that you’ve heard similar comments in your own organization. If you haven’t, then perhaps you’ve heard the same grievance stated differently. Executives often complain about this disconnect from their own perspective rather than the field’s. They say things like, “The sales force isn’t executing our strategy,” or, “Our lack of sales execution is a real problem.” Whether it’s linking activities to results or linking results to execution, it’s the same underlying problem—an inability to coherently link sales force activities to organizational results.

This is what our research contributes to the sales management discipline: the knowledge of how to connect organizational strategy to sales force tactics. Our time spent shuffling metrics around our war room wall revealed the levers and pulleys that now allow sales managers to do exactly what they’ve been asked to do for decades—to focus their salespeople on the few critical activities that will lead to their desired results. Our smart, motivated client now does know how to solve its problem, because we helped it incorporate the concepts in this book into its global sales manager training program. Activities → Objectives → Results. A simple yet profound equation.

AND FINALLY …

We have an acquaintance who used to be a partner in a global strategy consulting firm. Despite a long and successful career in management, he once confided to us that he had never read a single management book from beginning to end. He said that most business books only contained a couple of key concepts that he could pick up in the first few chapters, and reading any further was a waste of his time. We don’t necessarily agree, but his point was taken. It’s a large commitment of time for an executive to read a book. To justify the effort, the book had better be good.

If you’ve read this book from beginning to end, then we are flattered. It means that you’ve judged the content to be worth the investment of your time. We hope that you realize a great return on that investment, and we look forward to providing you with more insights in the future. There’s much more to be written about sales management, and we are committed to help write it. Until that time, good luck in the war room.