Across all industries, staying competitive and growing market share is a key concern for many executive teams. Specifically for manufacturers, sustaining vertical sales growth YoY can be difficult if the business processes and resources are not aligned and working efficiently. As more manufacturers experience Digital Transformation, growing emphasis is being placed on companies having lean and efficient processes. In an effort to compete, manufacturers suffering from slow account growth should follow these 4 steps: Identify, Design, Communicate, and Measure.
Identify:
In order to resolve any problem, the first step is to identify that problem.Identify the main issue and begin asking questions around what factors could be leading to the problem.
• Is it stagnant sales growth, weak pipeline, or loss of market share?
• Are there too few leads coming into the pipeline or is the quality of the leads poor?
• Are there processes which have excessive steps or are no longer adding value?
• Are there internal resources which are not completing certain tasks/activities which are of value?
• Are there measures in place for holding resources accountable and making sure operations is flowing efficiently?
Design:
Once you’ve targeted what needs to be improved, the next step is to define solutions that either replace or update the existing processes, and that can be measured for effectiveness.
To Help with Stagnant Sales Growth/Weak Pipeline
• Bring in CPQ to help with the Quote to Cash process.
• Set up Guided Selling so that your reps know exactly what activities they should be initiating with the customer at every stage of the Opportunity.
• Track and analyze which activities are leading to the most closed/won sales.
To Improve Lead Quality
• Use Pardot or other marketing automation tools to better qualify leads and focus resources on those which are most likely purchase your products/services.
• Set up lead assignment rules to route leads based on certain qualifying metrics so that your reps are closely monitoring and actively engaging with “hot” leads.
• Track and analyze which of your marketing sources are providing the best ROI.
To Streamline Processes
• Migrate any processes currently done with Excel over into Salesforce.
• Schedule activity and pipeline reports to run and be emailed weekly so that you can analyze your KPIs and adjust operations accordingly.
To Improve Internal Resources/Accountability
• Setup dashboard to show sales rep activity leaderboard and compare which reps are driving sales and which are falling behind.
• Setup dashboard for reps to see their activities and pipeline matched against their set goals.
The main goal is to design processes that drive key company objectives and leverage your resources to perform more efficiently.
Communicate:
The final step is around communicating the new process to your team and making sure everyone knows their role and the objectives they are being measured against.
• Appoint an adoption leader that will continuously communicate and drive process adoption.
• Reward those who are actively engaging with the new process and helping others.
• Communicate the value of the new process at the company and individual level.
Measure:
After new process are implemented, the next step is to measure how those processes are matching against greater sales performance and account growth.
• Set quantifiable targets for how much growth you expect to see in a given timeframe and set a cadence for how often you want to review how well you are meeting those goals.
• Communicate performance company wide so all resources can play a part in meeting objectives.
In summary, identifying inefficiencies, designing effective processes, communicating value, and measuring progress toward meeting objectives are all crucial steps in the fight to stay competitive. Grant your internal resources the ability be more productive in less time and implement processes that leverage those activities to exceed company goals. Organizations must also continuously measure growth and recognize the importance of regular self-evaluation so that they can make the necessary adjustments to stay on track.