Author: Matt greenstein Alexander Consulting Group USA Translation: Steven
Whether it is called sales operation, excellent business operation or sales empowerment, the purpose of the sales operation department is eternal: to make the whole marketing organization more effective and productive. However, the sales operation department itself should also evolve with the business development, otherwise it will be marginalized. Here, we discuss how the sales operation department evolves with the scale, complexity and maturity of the business.
Recently, in order to conduct in-depth research on the best practices of sales operations, I interviewed more than 25 sales operations leaders, including high-tech industries, medical industries and life sciences industries, and discussed with them the aims and objectives of their departments. The sales operation function must go through four stages of evolution in order to maintain its vitality and continue to contribute value. The mission of improving sales productivity runs through all stages, but how the team improves sales productivity is different at each stage. Let's discuss these four stages and the characteristics of each stage.
Primary stage 1: shadow operation-this stage is quite simple. Most companies only have a single product and a single market at the beginning of their business, and carry out sales work through a single or limited channel. There is no formal central sales operation department. Typical sales operation activities are carried out by several other departments, such as the financial department responsible for business analysis report, index setting, regional division and customer distribution; Human resources is responsible for sales salary, training and recruitment; It is responsible for data management. At this time, there is no formal sales operation function, and the task of improving sales productivity is scattered in different departments.
The second stage: sales operation-the pressure is coming! With the growth and expansion of business, the development of sales operation function should also keep up. In the last stage, those "shadow operations" are centralized and organized into a single department. At this stage, sales operations are generally concentrated on some core sales operations, such as data management, sales bonus administration, target setting, regional division and so on. Specific projects and some task requirements (generally refers to some temporary strategic projects, such as doing some market research, specific topic analysis, etc.). ). The company further expanded and began to set up branches in different regions, or set up new business departments. With the decentralization of company management, various activities often appear unnecessary duplication, resulting in waste and inefficiency. The productivity improvement at this stage comes from a. optimizing key activities in an integrated way, such as data management and goal setting; B. promoting the widespread application of best management practices; C. simplify and optimize various business processes. Decentralized sales operation management activities are centralized, and the inefficiency will be reduced.
The third stage: commercial operation-now things are getting more and more interesting. As the company expands more product lines and enters more markets, it needs more specialized sales operations. In fact, at this time, the word "sales operation" can no longer best express the purpose of this department. Some new terms began to appear, such as "sales support", "sales excellence" and "sales strategy and operation". This stage is temporarily called "commercial operation". Some tasks, such as data management, continue to be concentrated to improve the utilization efficiency of the data system. New jobs began to appear, such as sales empowerment-sales tools, sales training. Regional or departmental sales operations may be streamlined, while key sales operations are gathered at headquarters (some of which may be outsourced), which is becoming more and more important within the company. At this stage, sales operations are more mature and become an organic part of enterprises, and some training, learning and development, business intelligence analysis and other work are added to promote sales productivity more effectively. At this stage, companies usually invest in tools to enhance these areas that help improve efficiency. (Translator's Note: These tools are e-learning, CRM, etc. )
Stage 4: business operation-sales operation that has evolved to an advanced stage. With the evolution of the company's business to a more complex stage, the sales operation has also entered the fourth stage. At this stage, most of the sales business is highly concentrated, providing all-round support services for the company's business. At the same time, the sales support and regional management of business divisions or regional sales teams should also develop simultaneously, and provide strong support for all business divisions and regions with a unified global or company-wide reporting framework. The role of the sales operation team in the headquarters is more like the company's "intelligent center" (think tank, general staff), which provides insight for management, influences the company's strategy, and provides forward-looking analysis of sales forecast and business plan. At this time, the business operation department has perfect measures (methodology) to improve the effectiveness of the company's sales and become a multiplier of the company's strategy and strategic efficiency. The head of the business operation department will be promoted to CXO level, and he is eligible to participate in major conferences and seminars at the strategic level of the company.
In the whole four stages, the purpose of improving the productivity of the sales operation department is unchanged, and it is only a way to improve the productivity. Some sales operations departments are committed to increasing the top line, adopting flexible sales funnel management tools, sales training, carefully designed areas and designing incentive bonus plans. However, some sales operations departments are committed to applying some methods to increase the bottom line, such as optimizing the distribution of sales staff's visit time through data analysis to improve the output of each visit, or introducing some sales support resources to reduce the time wasted by sales staff on administrative affairs.
What stage is your company in?