We identify the weaknesses and potential in your sales system.
Sales Excellence is gaining more and more importance in practice. Sales systems face numerous challenges. Customers have already made up their minds 70% of the way before they meet a salesperson. E-commerce is continuously gaining importance, and multi-channel sales approaches are increasingly becoming the 'new normal'. At the same time, costs and complexity must be kept in balance with the potential among customers. During this time, many companies simply try to cut costs. Personnel costs in particular are often cut on the basis of simple considerations. The necessary systematic transformation of the company usually falls by the wayside. As a result, many new digital tools are introduced, field-sales resources are cut, and the pressure on the sales system increases.
Sales Excellence is a management framework intended to help reveal potential in selling and sales and to develop approaches for using it. In doing so, competencies for systematic and continuous transformation are to be built up or expanded.
Information management
Transformation
Sales strategy
Sales management
A brief introduction to the dimensions and success factors of our Sales Excellence Model.
In the sales literature, there are three different models for the Sales Excellence approach — by Belz et al., Homburg et al. and Pufahl. Belz et al. identify ten levers for improvement. Pufahl and Homburg et al. each assume four different dimensions. Pufahl names strategy, organisation, controlling and personnel. Homburg et al. list sales strategy, sales management, information management and customer-relationship management as dimensions of Sales Excellence. The model by Belz et al. is difficult to relate to other models because of its lack of a fundamental systematics. The general statements on sales management in the model by Pufahl et al. support a specific improvement of Sales Excellence in an organisation only to a limited extent. The model by Homburg et al. is distinguished by a structure and several specific recommendations for improving Sales Excellence. What all three models have in common is that digitalisation — whether in the form of digitalisation, personal selling or e-commerce — is not mentioned, or only in passing.
Only in the model by Homburg et al. is information management established as an important dimension of Sales Excellence. Their study results, however, lead them to conclude that improving information management in sales generates an optimal return on investment only up to a certain point. This statement may seem coherent at first glance, since only few companies possess comprehensive competencies in information management. Yet our studies were able to demonstrate that it is precisely information management that holds the greatest potential for companies, especially in sales. In the following, the individual dimensions of our approach are presented in more detail.
Here, the quality of the customer-value model is the most important success factor. Companies are required to improve their revenue- and contribution-margin-based customer-value models — or their non-existent customer-value models — towards a customer scoring or customer engagement value. Only an understanding of the value contribution for the customer and for the company allows optimal decisions, for example regarding field-sales management or discount management in e-commerce.
Here, the annual writing-down of the sales strategy is the most important success factor. Only when the sales strategy is formulated and written down is it understandable for all employees in sales, so that they can align their actions with it.
This level has the continuous review and adjustment of sales processes as its most important success factor. It is surprising that existing Sales Excellence models address the structure of the sales system comprehensively, but process design is still hardly considered. In process optimisation, it is especially important to proceed not from the organisation but from the customer. The focus should not be on the sales funnel, but on the individual customer journeys.
Here, following Homburg et al., interface management can be identified as the most important success factor. This comprises four dimensions:
stronger involvement of sales in offering development
improving cross-selling
merging marketing and sales into holistic customer-relationship management
the decentralised configuration of Sales Excellence
Successful sales systems strive for stronger involvement of customers in offering development. The keyword co-creation sales illustrates the increasing integration of the customer into offering development via a company's salespeople. Cross-selling is another important success factor in sales. Sales must be enabled to represent the company's entire service portfolio to customers as far as possible. Due to the increasing size and complexity of the service portfolio, this requires digital support for the individual salesperson. This makes clear how important it is to take digitalisation into account more strongly in Sales Excellence models.
In addition, digitalisation in many companies will lead to an organisational separation of marketing and sales increasingly dissolving. When the customer uses the different touchpoints ever more individually, and the purchase decision — whether B2B or B2C — has already been made to an average of 65% before the customer meets the point of sale or the salesperson, it becomes important to take a more integrative perspective on marketing and sales. The rising importance of e-commerce will also support this development. Finally, it should be noted that companies are building central Sales Excellence units with the aim of analysing and transforming the sales system. Here, Belz et al. point comprehensively to the problem of a stand-alone Sales Excellence unit at headquarters. Sales Excellence should therefore be understood as a decentralised task and anchored in the sales system as far as possible. We review the success factors of Sales Excellence in our annual Sales Excellence Study.
There have never been more sales channels than today, and the complexity that comes with them. As a specialised consultancy, we support you in shaping the coming transformation successfully. On the basis of our Sales Excellence approach, we can systematically determine your strengths and weaknesses in sales and unlock the existing potential together.
The article presents the model, distinguishes it from existing approaches, and presents the central success factors.
