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friction tune-up

You need a sales system, not more sales training

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You need a sales system not more sales training

Imagine a sales system as a series of dials. Turn the dials and you make an improvement, just like on a motorcycle. It is not uncommon to dial out friction and increase sales by 25 percent, just by making an adjustment to the sales system.

You didn’t re-engineer the business or rehire staff.

On the flip side, it can take years to train a salesperson before you see this type of improvement. With a sales system, you simply turn a dial and see immediate results.

friction tune-up

Like motorsport, speed is critical for success in sales

I’ll use a motorsport analogy to explain why sales systems are so effective for boosting sales.

Think of a motorcycle as a sales system and the motorcycle rider as a salesperson. A motorcycle is a system comprising of many parts like brakes, drive chain and suspension. If you improve any of the parts within the system, the rider achieves a faster lap time, without necessarily retraining or replacing the rider.

More budget is spent on ‘systems’ than training the riders

The cost to design and build a motorcycle system to win a race far eclipses the budget spent on rider training. Some of the world’s top motogp bikes have price tags exceeding US$2M each.

These bikes are priceless. The motorcycles have 30 to 40 sensors that gather data on suspension travel, exhaust temperature and steering angle.

What BMW can teach sales managers about sales systems

BMW claim to have one of the fastest ‘systems’ on the road. The new 2019 sr1000rr is a whole second faster than its predecessor. To put this statistic in perspective, it can take years to train a motorcycle rider to be a whole second faster. The BMW system is a second faster, out of the crate.

what is a sales system

Granted you’ll find good salespeople, like you can find good motorcycle riders. But wouldn’t it be better if out of the gate you had the fastest system? To find the fastest salesperson, you have to scour the globe and find, interview and hire. The best salesperson may not be willing to work with you.

However, with patience and testing, it is possible to design a sales system to outperform your competitors.

Having a fast salesperson is a bonus

Every improvement raises the effectiveness of every salesperson

What’s more, a sale system decodes how a founder sells and structures a sale into a recipe. Now that sales is a liberalized process, more minds can go to work each day improving the sales system. Instead of the founder gathering intel to improve the sales system, an entire salesforce is an intel machine.

Imagine a sales system as a series of dials. Turn the dials and you make an improvement.

Every improvement to the sales system raises the effectiveness of every salesperson

Key takeaways

You may never have the fastest salesperson, but it is possible to have the fastest sales system

A sales system can reduce selling to a bunch of dials on a dashboard

If you implement a sale system, sales increase immediately

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run frictionless

Anthony has two decades of experience consulting to marketplace and software-as-service startups. Brands include salesforce.com, Google, SAP, and IBM. He specializes in designing sales systems and is the author of the book run_frictionless: how to free a founder from a sales role. He has consulted to startups from the United Kingdom, Korea, Singapore, Philippines, and Australia. Anthony has been a founder of two startups. When he’s not working, Anthony enjoys racing sports bikes and sailing boats.

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