Whelmed

The English language - at least the American version - can be confusing. We can act nonchalant but we cannot act chalant. We can be overwhelmed or underwhelmed but how does one become whelmed? Perhaps we are whelmed when things are in balance. In fact, the dictionary defines whelmed as overwhelmed. Oh well.

What are consultants, especially sales consultants, hearing right now? Whelmed. The salespeople are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Overwhelmed salespeople are in organizations that are growing and have not increased their headcount. Or, they are in organizations that are stagnant and have reduced their headcount. Either way, these sales professionals have too much on their plate - too few people to address the identified opportunities.

Underwhelmed salespeople are in organizations that have too few opportunities for the number of salespeople they have.

As the Chief Sales Officer in your organization, what are you to do?

The answer, depending on the type of whelmed you are facing, is to either fine tune the familiar or redefine the process.

OVERWHELMED

If your salespeople are overwhelmed, it's probably time for you to fine tune the familiar.

You are doing enough of the right things the right way to have more business than you can effectively manage. In this economy, that's a good thing as long as your margins are strong (you're not buying market share). What you will want to find are ways to make things happen that do not rely on man-hours.

An effective way to accomplish this is to use the EDA approach from Kaizen for Sales:

ELIMINATE - Determine if there are any activities or processes you can eliminate without diminishing sales, customer relationships or operations. If your organization has seasoned, successful salespeople you will probably find few things that can be eliminated because your people are running lean and mean already. Still, it's worth a look.

DELEGATE - To whom can your salespeople delegate some of their activities? Two usual suspects are temporary or part-time employees and customers. One of our clients has salespeople who are adamant about not keeping their CRM content up to date. So we set up a telephone number they can call at the end of each day and simply talk about what they did that day. The following morning a part-time employee comes in (after dropping her kids at school) and transcribes the information into the CRM.

Customers are more likely than ever to take some of the selling responsibilities off of your salespeople. Have a brainstorming session with your sales and IT people on the topic of allowing/causing customers to do more of the sales for you. Tools and calculators can allow customers to take the sales process deeper before involving your salespeople.

AUTOMATE - More and more elements of your sales cycle can be automated. Is it time for your sales team to begin evaluating what activities can be templated or automated? Not until we consider the possibilities do we find ways of automating sales activities. Some of the templates and automations in use today were impossible only a short time ago. Begin by evaluating ongoing and routine tasks and, if they cannot be eliminated, think about how they could be automated. Then, move on to the more complex activities and find ways to automate them.

UNDERWHELMED

If your salespeople are underwhelmed, it is probably time for you to redefine the process. What you are doing is not working; you need to do something different. This is more difficult than fine tuning, obviously, and most people are incapable of doing this for themselves. Most of us are too close to our businesses, perspectives and habits to be objective. You need help to redefine your business.

If you are a member of a senior manager networking group, such as TEC/Vistage, you already have a brain trust you can use. If not, build an advisory group and go through the following exercise.

Step 1: Start with a blank piece of paper and agree that no preconceived ideas and processes are mandatory.

Step 2: Develop the business plan a newcomer in your industry would use to take your customers away from you. Imagine you are starting the company from scratch using the latest technologies and processes. How would you do it?

Step 3: Use analytics to determine which of the ideas are the most viable, meaning they could be implemented in a reasonable amount of time and with an ROI that makes sense.

Step 4: Prioritize the new ideas and determine which ones you will be able to use.

YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Customers are also either overwhelmed or underwhelmed. Some customers are overwhelmed with too many salespeople calling on them and, ironically, are underwhelmed by the quality of the messages they are hearing. Too many vendors are beginning to sound alike and, lacking any other decision criteria, customers are buying from the low-priced provider. Provide your customers with the information they need to achieve their goals or solve their problems. Don't try to overwhelm them with too much information or underwhelm them by lowering your price. Whelm them.

 Chuck