During the GFC there has been a significant sorting of players in the market and many companies have left the playing field for good. The ones that remain have endured radical behavior from their competitors with unrealistic price cuts, offers and acts of desperation as they attempt to hold sales in a collapsing market. Some of those competitors were unable to sustain the supply chain to their customers and have opened the door again for new suppliers to approach the customers. Others have won the customer on price and the focus of their team is all about price.

Customers have become very wise over the past 12-24 months. They have learnt to question sales people's representations, look deeper into offers and above all, not fall for the gimmicks and tactics that were used in the past during good times. They are looking across a much broader group of criteria when selecting suppliers and certainly that process has been applied to existing suppliers. Customers no longer have the luxury of surplus funds or decisions based on relationships. They seek hard business cases and facts to ensure they conduct business with the best supplier for their requirements.

Often companies faced with this challenge turn to sales training as the solution. They focus on the skills of the individual sales people. The problem being that many other contributing factors must be aligned for any sales person to succeed. Its all about the sales strategy, the organisations alignment and customer behaviors. You need to make the right changes, tweaks and maybe overall changes to ensure you stay in the competitive landscape, customer criteria and their behaviors.

The obvious signs that your sales strategy is out of alignment are:

• The sales results are under budget/sales goals
• You are experiencing eroding margins
• New business gains are minimal or insufficient
• Existing accounts have been lost to competitors
• Pipelines are stalled
• Average sales values have dropped significantly
• Your surviving on your Top 20 accounts
• You cannot break into new customer segments

These points are all often confused with selling ability but if we consider sales people take to the market your sales strategy - then you need to go back and confirm the strategy is supporting them. Sales people are tired and many report the last 12 months to be the most difficult times they have experienced as the market literally crashed uncontrollably, depending on your industry. They have been beaten up, pushed aside and generally taken the biggest hiding in living memory and for many it is a case of "you cannot race a dead horse". They need highly effective sales strategies and organizational alignment to freshen their approach in the market and get back to excelling.

You need to ask yourself:

• What does the voice of the customer tell you about how customers view your company? Is customer satisfaction and loyalty improving or declining?
• How are your salespeople spending their time? The focus of your sales people will define the customer profile, retention, product mix and above all sales revenue.
• What accounts are the sales people focusing their energies on? Are your sales people making the best decisions on accounts to target, service or are they seeking the easiest to access? How much money is being left in the market through an indiscriminate customer management programme.
• What do your sales managers and salespeople indicate are the top barriers? If they could wave the magic wand, what would be different in the organization?
• What contribution are inside sales playing in the overall sales revenue? Is this resource being used to maximize the ROI on their cost?
• What internal organizational structures can be improved that will support a higher ROI on sales people? Has the organization adopted habits and internal processes that support gaining best value from sales people or have processes or cultures developed that disguise the real issues at the cost of lower ROI?

It would be easy for a company to quickly decide "these are all under control" however if you are experiencing any of the aforementioned mis-alignment signs, you could be seeking to stay in your comfort zone and not challenge, review and confirm you have the right sales strategy. Being too close to the situation has many disadvantages and all of those will be realized at some point in the bottom line.

You need to define an action plan that will challenge, review and confirm your sales strategy - no matter how painful the answer maybe. Sales Managers need to have a set of tools, processes and disciplines to work through their organization that gives them those answers and the facts needed for the decisions that must be made.

Some may find the answers bring about the need for major change that can include new "go to market strategies", new management disciplines of customer accounts, new performance measures, internal organizational re-alignment to name a few. Once you have identified the full extent of what is required to be addressed then the next important step is implementation of the new change.

This is where most organizations fail. They don't spend enough time developing the details around how to make the new processes work. Oftentimes, there isn't buy-in across the management ranks which has significant impact on the sales division. The company may not sequence the change correctly and it then becomes the "current trend" instead of instituting cultural change. Companies often get lost in the process and "ditch it" for a softer path causing more problems for the sales division including a loss of confidence.

The last and most important factor being having the right captain of change. The person who can be analytical to ascertain all the changes required. The person who can engage all the management and prioritize the right changes in order. The person who can coach and guide the sales team and support them through the change. The person who can measure the results on numerous levels and not just the obvious KPI's.

Your organization may well appoint an internal team to challenge, review and confirm the right sales strategy and implementation. They will be your "sales force effectiveness" team. You may have an individual that fits all the criteria and they are the "sales force effectiveness leader" depending on the size of your organization.

Sales Focus International guides companies through the implementation of Sales Force Effectiveness within their organization, whether a team or individual leader. Please review our Sales Force Effectiveness Programme for details