Professional Services and Sales Force Advisory

Professional Services and Sales Force Advisory

The Sales Management Association’s advisory services leverage best practice operating benchmarks in sales force effectiveness, collected from thousands of business-to-business sales organizations, and assembled over 15 years of research.

We help our member firms

  • assess sales force effectiveness,
  • compare GTM models and sales organization practices with industry norms,
  • quantify performance gaps and identify their root causes,
  • define and execute initiatives that demonstrably improve firm performance, and
  • build management competency in core commercial capabilities.

Learn more by requesting a consulting prospectus and exploratory call.

Representative Projects

Sales and market potential estimation. We develop models that quantify both addressable and winnable potential in target markets. These models quantify potential at the account, territory, product, and business unit level, and offer an objective source for sales performance goal setting. Our models combine quantitative frameworks and research data. Once implemented, management can easily scale and adapt models to changing market conditions.

Sales planning and forecasting. We educate your management team on leading sales planning approaches, and implement planning models that drive accurate forecasting, budgeting, and goal setting. We focus on planning approaches that increase transparency and understanding among sales associates, and that optimize overall sales force productivity.

Sales force effectiveness assessment. We review your sales force capabilities across eight core disciplines. Our guidance on improvement opportunities draws from comprehensive best practice benchmarks and operating metrics gleaned from decades of research on business-to-business sales organizations. Improvement recommendations quantify the business impact of narrowing performance gaps, and include prioritized action plans for implementing change.

Sales process audit. Our deep dive assessments of selling activity clarify the sales organization’s process focus. We recommend changes to increase process rigor, improve sales process design, and maximize sales throughput to improve productivity.

Sales process design sprint. Effective sales process design unlocks productivity in sales teams and provides a foundation for scalable, predictable growth. Our design sprints incorporate best practice design principles and reinforce process discipline in sales management efforts. Drawing on your sellers’ existing expertise, we capture and refine best practices, then facilitate collaborative approaches to implementing process standards.

Salesperson assignments and sales territory optimization. Optimized territories balance workload and selling capacity and can significantly improve overall sales force productivity. We help firms model sales response, estimate and balance sales potential, optimally size and deploy sales resources, and implement call prioritization and field territory management frameworks.

Sales performance management. We benchmark your performance management practices with industry standards and business-to-business best practice. We identify opportunities to align salesperson assessments, prioritized performance metrics, reporting, alignment with incentives, and performance coaching. We can recommend enabling technology, SPM systems, and implementation partners.

Sales compensation plan assessment. Includes market pay benchmarking and plan design assessment, quantitative analysis of pay and performance, and plan redesign recommendations.

Sales compensation plan design. Our plan design recommendations include detailed plans, costing models, communication materials, and implementation guidance.

Sales culture assessments. Our research details effective practice in building, sustaining, and transforming sales culture. We help firms audit and assess sales culture, and implement specific initiatives to drive healthy and productive cultures in the sales organization.

Sales manager training. We help codify sales manager learning objectives, prioritize development goals, and offer best-in-class learning content and delivery, which we co-certify alongside your corporate L&D programs.

Certifications. We certify management roles through our Certified Sales Management Professional and Certified Sales Operations Professional designations, and certify corporate commercial effectiveness though customized audits.

 

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Become a member

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Underwriters Learn more
Blue Horizons Group
Conquer.io
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Akeron
Xactly
eSpatial