Ask Andi: Our sales support is failing us. I’m afraid to sell more business because I don’t think we have enough resources to handle it. What does this mean for our company?
Thoughts of the Day: What level of sales support is just right to boost efficiency and grow? Customer aftercare is important for any business. Accurate sales planning coordinated with operations goals is essential. A good sales team sells what’s needed, keeps the company informed, and educates current and future customers about what’s coming next. Help your team be more effective.
Sales support is more than selling
Selling more this year than last year is a given for any company’s sales support department. Effectively managing sales also includes hitting macro and micro targets, based on continuous planning and review. A great sales department teams with its operations counterpart to regularly look at questions of quantity, dollar volume and profitability matched to present and future customer needs.
Sales must know what operations can deliver, now and in the future. It needs to inform operations about potential problems selling things that operations want to produce. Sales must take action when it sees that customers are likely to want something operations isn’t yet prepared to deliver. Constant, collaborative information flow gets both parts of the company working toward the same realistic endpoint. That makes it easier for sales to do its job in the future.
Think of the problem this way: Sales decides to sell 1,000 units. Operations can only produce 800. Two hundred customers, or more, if there are delays in the production schedule, go away unhappy and are likely to complain about the company. Those complaints floating around the marketplace make it harder for sales in the future.
Putting ideas into practice
Alternately, operations produce 1,200 units, and sales can only find buyers for 1,000. Two hundred units go unsold. The cost of producing those excess units eats away at overall profitability. Customers may be happy that they received their orders on time but may balk at future orders because sales prices had to go up to cover the lower profit in the previous cycle.
In both instances, customers suffer. Sales struggle to fill its future pipeline. Much better for everyone when sales build goals in concert with production.
Planning starts with one-year and five-year cycles. What does the company need to sell in the upcoming year in order to be profitable? In five years, what will the company look like? Regarding customer wants and needs what will alter? Concerning production methodology and raw materials, anticipate modifications and transformations. How will the economy and competitive threats affect both supply and demand?
Once there’s an agreement on one- and five-year objectives, a quarterly review cycle comes into play. Were sales goals met last quarter? How about profitability? Was the delivery on time? What adjustments in sales support would lead to a resounding “yes” to all of those questions?
Fundamental components of business
Having analyzed the last quarter, it’s time to look forward. Adjust targets. Consider the following questions: Increase volume or decrease? Switch around what’s being sold? Have the right customers? Are customers paying in full? Is anyone asking for significant discounts, which can indicate pressure from competitive threats or selling on price instead of selling on value?
Get specific. How much of what do you need to sell? Deliver by when? Update operations weekly, monthly, and quarterly so it can plan and adjust.
Constantly assess sales support. Can sales meet the company’s upcoming goals with some capacity to spare? Or are sales stretched and barely hitting their targets? It’s essential to know when sales are under or over-resourced.
Prepare for long-term success by asking sales support to educate and assess the marketplace. Make sure customers know what’s being done to meet their upcoming needs. Look for “right fit” prospects to fill the pipeline. Ask for today’s order and request commitments to future plans.
Looking for a good book? Try Sales & Operations Planning: The How-To Book Handbook by Thomas F. Wallace and Robert A. Stahl.
Andi Gray is president of Strategy Leaders Inc., a business-consulting firm that specializes in helping entrepreneurial firms grow. You can reach her by phone at (877) 238-3535. Do you have a question for Andi? Please send it via email to AskAndi@strategyleaders.
