Commercial Excellence - what is it?
More and more companies look to Commercial Excellence to gain organic growth. And it makes perfect sense. Studies show that a given company can achieve up to 30% gross margin growth if they work structured with the sales and marketing functions AND focus their energy on the customers. My own experiences heading both Sales Excellence departments and Sales departments say this is absolutely true.
2016 has just begun and you look at this year’s sales target. Perhaps you think; how is this even possible? Or perhaps you have looked at your sales pipeline and feel confident that 2016 will be a good year. If you are looking to develop your sales and marketing functions further and implement Commercial Excellence - with or without help from external consultants - you may want to understand what Commercial Excellence is first. I have listed the most important elements below - have a look. I’m sure you are already covered on most bullets:
You have a clear company and sales strategy that everyone in the team knows - and everyone understands how they contribute to reach the goal.
You have already set ambitious but realistic targets at team and individual level - all supporting the strategy
You have your monthly management reporting in place and know how to measure your targets. Perhaps you have created a balance score card that takes care of the soft targets
You understand that the team needs ongoing training of their skills to ensure that they have skills to be successful (product, process and system skills)
You have a modus operandi in place every 2-3 weeks where sales reps report sales pipeline to managers and managers to directors. This is the perfect opportunity to ask for/offer help
You collaborate with Marketing and they understand what lead generating activities they should do to support the strategy and the targets
Everyone in your organisation uses CRM and tracks every interaction with the customers. The quality is high and the data in the CRM system can easily be used to drive more sales.
All the sales processes have been tested and optimized and the sales operation is running smoothly
And last but not least the customer journey is mapped, touch points are measured and we understand how to protect and support our customers
I’m sure you are already working with the Commercial Excellence agenda - partly or the full package. The key to a successful implementation of Commercial Excellence lies in top management engagement, change management and to be to be persistence.
