According to research by SalesForce Search, only 10% of sales people provide ROI, 40% will miss quota, 22% are un-trainable, and sales team turnover is 40% per yegoar. Just the percentages are alarming, but consider the economic impact of 90% of more than 22 million sales professionals not hitting quota in North America.
Fortunately the alarm is being sounded to address the sales performance crisis from academia and a growing body of thought leaders in sales training, consulting, and recruiting. There is a significant movement towards integrating the science of technology and analytics with the art of selling from a holistic mindset. Seems like gamifiation across multiple channels is the ideal solution.
In an article from the Harvard Business Review Blog Network entitled, “CEOs Need to Get Serious About Sales,” the message focuses on the importance of analytics and “Building a lean selling machine” that optimizes sales operations with automated tools. CEOs need to champion the “sales as a science” approach and invest 2 to 4 percent of the sales budget to develop analytical tools and teams to monitor trends.
The old idea that Sellers can talk buyers into anything is taking a 180% turn to customer centric selling. When I spoke with John Holland, the co-author of “Customer Centric Selling”, he stressed that sellers need to “close on the buyer’s timeframe” and it is vital to understand human buying behavior. The ability to monitor selling and buying behaviors through analytical tools is at the core of implementing customer centric selling. Mr. Holland is not alone in his philosophy.
In the book “Sales Growth: 5 Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders”, McKinstry’s Jon Vander Arc’s research makes the point that when companies get technology right the results are impressive. He continues by explaining that as digital channels become more complex, IT will be ever more central to outselling the competition.
Change is also emerging from the front end of sales performance. In my interview with SalesForce Search’s CEO, Matthew Cook, I learned how they are using technology to “attract” top talent, are dedicated to improving the skills of their candidates, and providing extended services that help new hires have an immediate impact on quota. At the core of their recruiting innovations is Inbound Marketing across multiple channels to continuously attract top sales talent and the development of advanced online sales training in partnership with an Ivy League university.
The common denominator for sales trainers, business consultants, and recruiters is the utilization of technology across multiple channels to collect buyer data and apply analytics to improve sales performance. These industry thought leaders all support the value of organizations adopting a holistic mindset integrates technologically driven science with the creativity of sales leaders. This holistic approach is a welcome departure from technology solutions developed in silos.
CRM, Sales Force Automation, and other technologies have tended to promote technology / science as THE sales solution. However, without creative “whole-brain” leadership to link technology with sales people and consumers technology has minimal impact. Furthermore, the inherent problem with the various iterations of CRM is the reliance data entry from sales people that is biased and inconsistent.
Sellers need no longer settle for subjective and limited data collection sources. Real-time feedback from the brand’s digital ecosystem of ‘Users’ (as defined in my previous post) can be collected across multiple-channels and made available to everyone in the company with gamification as the hub. The gamified enterprise is the engine to transform behavioral data into timely and relevant customer-facing engagement and create company wide contributions into the sales process.
It’s time to get the word out to thought leaders in the sales industry and CEOs who are getting serious about sales that the gamified enterprise is a vital tool in the movement to solve the sales performance crisis.