Because process is paramount, it is critical to understand its nature. An appreciation of process maturity is fundamentally important. Think about it as a progression through five levels – Instinctive, Repetitive, Methodical, Measured and Systemic.

Maturity Level 1: Instinctive

In my sales training classes, I always ask how many of the women who as children had subjected their fathers to the output of an “Easy-Bake” oven. That question is followed by taking a headcount of the number of fathers who at least one time enthusiastically, if not totally honestly, endorsed the high quality and fine taste of those awful little cookies. I also ask them to recall the first time they (tried to) hit a golf ball, jump rope, play a musical instrument, etc.

There seems to be universal agreement that the only way to achieve success as a beginner at anything is to work incredibly hard or to be incredibly lucky.

Recall your very first sales call… In fact, remember those first few months… Bring back as many of the details as possible. How comfortable were you? How confident did you feel?

More than likely, your early successes were due mainly to determination, hard work and your gut instincts. You, like every other rookie rep, started out at this instinctive level of sales process maturity.

Our research indicates that roughly 45% of sales reps are at this level.

Maturity Level 2: Repetitive

To continue the cooking process analogy, I recall when my older daughter began to prepare meals that the family actually enjoyed. For whatever reason, she became intrigued with feeding us and consciously observed how others did it. She watched TV cooking shows, asked a lot of questions and experimented with her own ideas. In business terms, she began collecting best practices.

The same type of story could be told with regard to golf, musical instruments or selling. As time passed in your career, you were astute enough to recognize that some sales techniques and tactics worked better than others. Like any “maturing” rep, you consciously focused on executing the tasks that consistently produced results. You moved up to the repetitive level of sales process maturity. Perhaps without consciously knowing it, you became a student of “Sales Best Practices.” You not only repeated the things that worked for you, but studied others and emulated the things that worked for them and continued to experiment.

Our research indicates that nearly 40% of sales reps are at this level.

Maturity Level 3: Methodical

One more time with the cooking analogy… Anyone who has prepared and served a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner shares an insight. The turkey might be perfect, along with the stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy, etc. The real problem is timing. Not only does each component of the meal require cooking best practices for consistent, high quality results, but also its preparation must be coordinated with that of every other component. The more courses and the more dishes per course, the more complex and challenging it becomes to provide the perfect dining experience. (Who wants cold turkey with hot potatoes and reheated vegetables?)

While most cookbooks are excellent collections of “Cooking Best Practices,” their focus is component by component. Very few have gone the extra – quite difficult – mile of documenting the exact optimum sequence and timing of tasks starting with the shopping trip, through preparation, serving, cleanup and effective, creative use and consumption of leftovers.

Similarly, not many companies have their sales best practices documented and readily available for pragmatic use. (Strictly speaking that’s the requirement for Level 2.) Still fewer have invested the time and made the – again, quite difficult – effort to write down the entire sequence and timing of events that consistently leads to superior sales performance. In addition to the list of steps, the sales process also needs to be flow-charted. The “picture” a flow chart provides, aids and accelerates understanding and greatly simplifies the identification of dependencies on others, redundancies and/or unnecessary steps. (See Appendix IV.)

If you have never tried to document your complete sales process, doing so may sound simple. It’s not. In fact, most are amazed at how difficult it is. Perhaps even more surprising (“upsetting” may be a better word) is how little agreement there is as to what the process actually entails. I repeat – documenting a sales process will turn out to be much tougher than you think.

Don’t kid yourself! I make a habit of asking sales executives if they have a sales process. Virtually always, the reply is a confident, “Yes.” Next I ask if I could see a copy. Almost always I see a jolt in their eyes and then get a speech about how “all the reps know it.” The dust on the cover chagrins even those few that can actually produce a copy.

A “Sales Best Process” has a profound superiority over a collection of “Sales Best Practices.”

Our research shows that only about 10% of sales reps/organizations ever move up to this methodical level.

Maturity Level 4: Measured

Keep score and track statistics about everything. Level 4 implies tracking far more than number of calls made, proposals in process, revenue year-to-date and backlog. Some level 4 firms record, track and report on the quality and quantity of as many as fifty unique sales tasks.

If that strikes you as excessive, consider for a moment a different business process – manufacturing. Any plant manager of even a small facility can produce data regarding quantity, quality, speed, temperature, pressure, length, width, height, weight, cost and time. Not only that, reports on each of these data points, their relationships to each other and trends can be produced for at least each day of operations, probably for each hour and in some cases for much smaller units of time. In other words, they keep and regularly and effectively use thousands of real time statistics.

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is the key enabler of profitable manufacturing operations. Statistical Process Control is also the key enabler of profitable sales operations.

Some of you are thinking, “No, no, no – the sales process is very different from the manufacturing process.” Every sales situation is unique. Sales reps need to be free to do whatever it takes. Sales requires constant adaptation and adjustment.

Consider this… Before the Model T’s introduction in 1908, every car made was – literally – unique. The people building those cars were professionals, free to adapt and adjust as needed to complete the job. (Just like your sales reps?)

Before 1908, only the wealthy could afford a car. But then, Mr. Ford started to focus on process. He implemented some rudimentary statistical control over his process and became a legend. Hundreds of other “wanna-be” auto tycoons got driven into bankruptcy.

After World War II, Japanese car manufacturers very nearly totally overwhelmed their U.S. counterparts. They listened carefully to W. Edwards Deming and others (mostly Americans!) who advocated “SPC” (Statistical Process Control).

I wonder if any of your competitors has been carefully measuring and monitoring their sales process and is about to unleash the selling equivalent of a Model T or Toyota Corolla?

Our research indicates that less than 5% of sales organizations have legitimately reached this measured level.

Maturity Level 5: Systemic

According to our definition, a level 5 sales force has implemented an automated, monitored, simple-to-use, painless, self-tuning, self-correcting sales process that has feedback loops for each significant sales activity and never fails.

Quite frankly, we have yet to find anyone who meets those criteria. If they’re out there, they’re surely not talking much about it.

What’s really troubling is this… Many, many sales execs are expending considerable time, money and resources to implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems. Legitimately, these efforts are squarely aimed at “Level 5”. To date, something like 70% of these projects have failed. Ouch!

The explanation for such a high failure rate is really quite simple. Successful sales people, managers and execs are universally positive, self-confident, aggressive and striving to be number one. Aim high! Go for Level 5! Here’s the rub. Before my CRM system can provide meaningful statistical analysis, I must know what the key indicators are. That is, I need to be a black–belt Level 4. Before I can even measure more than a handful of sales activities, I must have my sales process defined in detail. That is, I need to be a black-belt Level 3. Before I can hope to define a sales process that is consistently used by my entire sales force, I must have a deep, visceral understanding of my Sales Best Practices. (Note that it’s not “useful”, “helpful” or “good” practices, but truly “Best.”) To get to be this Level 2 black-belt, I need to have expended substantial, genuine, long-term effort to collecting, codifying and organizing all those little things that work.

Simply put, the laws of nature won’t let your sales team skip a level. Note the words “sales team”. Just because you, the sales leader, are ready for the leap to Level 3, does not mean that the bulk of the sales team is ready. CRM and SFA projects fail to produce the desired results because the decision makers fail to do the requisite level 2, 3 and 4 “heavy lifting.”

Key Constraints and Sub-Processes

Unless you have a hard-core engineer’s genetic code, the idea of taking your entire sales team and entire sales process methodically through each maturity level is not particularly appealing. Unless you have lots of idle cash and a comfortable, sustainable lead on all of your competitors, it is also far too risky.

Break it down into parts. Identify THE key constraint, bottleneck, most common obstacle to closing deals. Focus on the sub-processes, the components of your complete sales process that address that constraint. Move up a maturity level or two with those activities – until that factor is no longer the most significant obstacle. Then go identify the new “key constraint” and repeat the process over and over and over. Baby steps!

“TODOs”

• Rate the maturity or your overall sales process on three levels on a quarterly basis
  • In regard to yourself, personally
  • In regard to the sales team or teams that report to you
  • In regard to your entire company
• List the top 10 activities/skills that contribute the most to your personal success.
  • Put them in priority sequence
  • Rate your maturity level for each of these 10 skills
  • Develop and implement a plan to raise the level of three of these activities/skills in the next 90 days
• Repeat step two with regard to the sales team or teams that report to you
• Repeat step two with respect to your whole company
• Track your progress on all of the above for the next ten years. (NOTE: Your top ten list will change over time as new key constraints present themselves. That’s OK. You only have a problem if the list never changes!)