Driving Business Results Through Sales Excellence

based on research from the Sales Executive Council (SEC), discussing how to " shift the performance curve " in sales organizations. The article described the topic as " a decidedly new lens " for focusing our time and investment to improve sales results. The purpose of this article is to outline a structured approach to implementing this new lens and to illustrate sample business results that have been achieved in the field. The essential core of the approach advocated by the SEC is to determine what stars do that makes them stars. What are the " exportable " things that stars do that average or core performers can replicate? As Winer and Gschwandtner state: …modeling high performer behavior as a blueprint for improving the core proves challenging for three reasons. First, top performers are often unaware of the behaviors that lead to their success. …Second, it is a difficult and time-consuming task to isolate true success drivers. …Finally, even if the disciplines identified are correct, transferring them meaningfully requires a very different take on improving skills and sales process than exists in most companies. This article addresses each of these challenges in the hopes of equipping readers with a practical approach to overcoming them. The goal, of course, is to enable sales leaders to achieve dramatic improvement in business results. Before addressing these three challenges, it is first necessary to address one challenge left unspoken, namely, identifying the stars in the first place. While it may seem obvious who the stars are, it's never as easy as it first seems. In our work with sales organizations from multiple industries and across product and service lines, this question has often proven difficult. Is it those reps who exceed quota by the largest percentage? Those who have the most predictable sales funnel? Those who have the greatest breadth of territory coverage? Those with the biggest accounts? Highest customer satisfaction? All of those are possible candidates, and all have been cited by our clients, which leads to the first step in the process: Stakeholder Analysis. Stakeholder Analysis is simply going first to the various stakeholders affected by the sales force and eliciting from them what measures matter most to them and the rest of the business. In other words, clearly define what performance should be replicated. GP Strategies has been involved in projects where the answers were not as obvious as we initially …