Has your sales organization or channels lost a step? This has been a common theme for the past year given the business challenges that most organizations have faced. So the sales team has come under a lot of pressure as they are the front lines of business generation (or lack thereof).
To help your sales organization gain better traction in 2010 you need to look for programs and offerings that better resonate with the customer. By now I’m sure you have been launched a number of actions, so you’ll need to judge how effectively these actions engage both the sales team and customers.
Don’t be afraid to look at additional actions and plans to fire up the business. This is a time to be agile and flexible. I recommend that you begin to look for actions for the next two quarters, obviously adding in real time as necessary.
Teams often spend a lot of time on getting the compensation and other incentive right for our channels. This is all well and good, but nothing delivers like a hot product, promotion, or offering.
Last year I was involved with a client in which half of their channel partners were inactive for at least 18 months. When we spoke with many of these partners, they weren’t totally turned off, just that they had better options for making more money. Once our client found the root causes and put a plan in place, over 40% of these dormant partners woke up and participated with significant orders in a period of 120 days. These orders were the reason our client’s overall business was up 12%, instead of being flat as they had forecasted.
Because channels are most critical to firing up your revenue engine, I’ll write about various aspects of channels in the coming weeks. Understanding channel issues takes constant pulse-taking, as well as drawing out what customers and channels don’t say as much as what they’re outspoken about. Careful listening and sorting out the background noise is always the challenge. Being able to step back and be objective about what you’re hearing - instead of assuming others are on board or need to be further corralled into your view - is an important mindset for leaders.
The true sign of effective market sensing is that you’re going to pick some new thoughts compared to prior quarters and years. Best wishes for firing them up in 2010.