Joe Galvin is Miller Heiman’s new Chief Research Officer and EVP. Joe brings to Miller-Heiman a significant following in the sales operations community. Attendees of last year’s Sales Productivity and Performance Management Conference will remember Joe – he moderated several panels and delivered a well-received workshop himself.
We’re looking forward to Joe’s upcoming session at the Sales Management Association’s Sales Operations Effectiveness Workshop, 19-20 June, at DePaul University’s Center for Sales Leadership in Chicago. Joe’s session focuses on Miller Heiman’s research on “world class sales organizations.” We caught up with Joe earlier this week, and asked for his thoughts on what made certain sales organizations world-class and how sales operations could support such standards of excellence.
Sales Management Association: What makes sales organizations world-class
JG: The basis for our world class designation is our sales best practice study. Over the 9 years of the survey, 27,000 people have participated in it. For the 2012 study, we had over 1,200 qualified responses representing every vertical market, company size and time zone. World class sales organization are defined as those who average a 6 or better on our survey questions. We then validate their performance as compared to the other 94%. What we have consistently seen is that these world class organizations outperform the others by 20% in categories such as Sales person productivity, quota achievement, account acquisition, account retention and lead growth. Over the years we have the number of companies defined as world class fluctuate between 6-7% of the survey population. We conduct our survey in November of each year sharing the results in Q1 of the following year. We will be sharing the Executive Summary of the Best Practice study with attendees and I will be presenting analysis of the strategic Issues from study supported by additional data points. This will lead to the identification of the attributes of WC sales organizations and their strategic imperatives
Sales Management Association: Is the standard of excellence in sales organizations evolving
JG: The standard for excellence is not changing; rather it's how you consistently achieve excellence that challenges sales leaders. Sales organizations must continuously innovate as their market changes, their products evolve and their competitors adapt. Eventually all will have to transform how they go to market or face declining success. Technology is the change catalyst. Technology has and is changing everything about our lives and business. Technology has changed how customers access information, it is changing how sales people communicate with customers and it has changed our ability to visualize and measure our business. The tablet is a current example of how technology can amplify, accelerate and illuminate what we sell, without changing how we sell. The tablet provides a dynamic platform for presentations, product demonstrations, subject matter expert in a box, video platform, etc. But it is still just a display platform. Granted, it's a ridiculous improvement from the A-frame they gave me at Xerox in 1984. It still requires thought provoking content and messages that can be delivered in the context of the customer’s concept.
Sales Management Association: How important a role does sales operations play in supporting world-class sales organizations
JG: The Sales operations function is increasing in significance in every company that is focused on improving sales productivity. The key word is leverage. Sales operations provides leverage across every aspect of sales as it needs to become the strategy creation and execution function. Traditional core operational sales planning and analysis must now include sales training, sales enablement and sales technology, each function building and relying on each other to improve the sales person's ability at each level to create opportunities, manage opportunities and manage relationships. Sales leaders will be challenged each year with reducing costs and increasing revenue – that has not and will not cease. What WC organizations have recognized is that increased productivity can only be accomplished through the leverage the sales operations function can provide.
Sales Management Association: What surprises did you find in the research data
JG: The most surprising data point to me was confidence in CRM data. WC organizations had an 81% confidence in their CRM data as compared to just 25% for the other organizations. CRM data, the variable input of opportunity data by sales people that comprises the pipeline and forecast values, is the major benefit CEOs/CFOs paid for when they bought CRM/SFA systems. If you don't trust that data, then why do you continue to pay for these systems that sales people either don't use or use in very different ways? And then, if you don't trust the data… how do you make decisions? WC organizations have confidence in their data not because of the technology, but because they have advanced levels of process maturity, sales management coaching and the discipline to classify and maintain the status of each opportunity against their process definitions. This is not a data point about technology, rather it speaks to the ability of an organization to execute, and that has always been the hallmark of any world class organization, be it high performing sales teams or world championship sports teams.
