(This is the third in a three-part restructuring and build-out of a previous post. See note [1] for details.)
In the first two posts in this series, we first defined a repeatable sales process and then discussed how to prove that your sales process is repeatable.
All that was just the warm-up for the big idea in this series: is repeatability enough?
The other day I was re-reading my favorite book on data governance (and yes I have one), Non-Invasive Data Governance by Bob Seiner. Reading it reminded me of the Capability Maturity Model, from Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute.
Here’s the picture that triggered my thinking:
Did you see it? Look again.
Repeatable is level two in a five-level model. Here we are in sales and marketing striving to achieve what our engineering counterparts would call 40% of the way there. Doesn’t that explain a lot?
To think about what we should strive for, I’m going to switch models, to CMMI, which later replaced CMM. While it lacks a level called “repeatable” – which is what got me thinking about the whole topic in the first place – I think it’s nevertheless a better model for thinking about sales [2].
Here’s a picture of CMMI:
I’d say that most of what I defined as a repeatable sales process fits into the CMMI model as level 3, defined. What’s above that?
- Level 4, quantitively managed. While most salesforces are great about quantitative measurement of the result – tracking and potentially segmenting metrics like quota performance, average sales price, expansion rates, win rates – fewer actually track and measure the sales process [3]. For example, time spent at each stage, activity monitoring by stage, conversion by stage, and leakage reason by stage. Better yet, why just track these variables when you can act on them? For example, put rules in place to take squatted opportunities from reps and give them to someone else [4], or create excess stage-aging reports that will be reviewed in management meetings.
- Level 5, optimizing. The idea here is that once the process is defined and managed (not just tracked) quantitatively, then we should be in a mode where we are constantly improving the process. To me, this means both analytics on the existing process as well as qualitative feedback and debate about how to make it better. That is, we are not only in continual improvement mode when it comes to sales execution, but also when it comes to sale process. We want to constantly strive to execute the process as best we can and also strive to improve the process. This, in my estimation, is both a matter of culture and focus. You need a culture that process- and process-improvement-oriented. You need to take the time – as it’s often very hard to do in sales – to focus not just on results, but on the process and how to constantly improve it.
To answer my own question: is repeatability enough? No, it’s not. It’s a great first step in the industrialization of your sales process, but it quickly then becomes the platform on which you start quantitative management and optimization.
So the new question should be not “is your sales process repeatable?” but “is it optimizing?” And never “optimized,” because you’re never done.
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Notes
[1] I have a bad habit, which I’ve been slowly overcoming, to accidently put real meat on one topic into an aside of a post on a different one. After reading the original post, I realized that I’d buried the definition of a repeatable sales model and the tests for having one into a post that was really about applying CMMI to the sales model. Ergo, as my penance, as a service to future readers, and to help my SEO, I am decomposing that post into three parts and elaborating on it during the restructuring process.
[2] The nuance is that in CMM you could have a process that was repeatable without being (formally) defined. CMMI gets rid of this notion which, for whatever it’s worth, I think is pretty real in sales. That is, without any formal definition, certain motions get repeated informally and through word of mouth.
[3] With the notable exception of average sales cycle length, which just about everyone tracks – but this just looks at the whole process, end to end. (And some folks start it late, e.g., from-demo as opposed to from-acceptance.)
[4] Where squatting means accepting an opportunity but not working on it, either at all or sufficiently to keep it moving.
