Increasing sales performance is a constant focus for all good sales organizations This quest, more often than not, focuses on what might best be called this year's holy grail or magic bullet rather than on an ongoing system that can focus, align and support those engaged in the sales process. Too often organizations rely on a dazzling new programs that impact an element of the sales process that they may indeed optimize, but then what happens? They commonly result in little impact on actual sales. Focusing on one element gives you focus and a feeling that you are having a big impact, but in many if not most cases, the result is a big surprise- not much bottom line impact. It's not the new CRM or web-based system, not the new training program and not the new incentive program that will get you the results you need and desire. You have to consider the entire sales process which over goes beyond even how most organizations define this process.

Here, we will discuss the parameters of the sales performance improvement opportunity, the Agiledge Sales Process and Communications Execution System (SPACE) First, let's look at the nature of this situation, some root causes of performance and key opportunities. A conventional way of looking at your performance capability is to look at KSA or knowledge, skills and attitudes - this is a good framework for writing job descriptions, not so good for action planning and management because it doesn't consider how we create and maintain the knowledge, skills and attitudes - we need a simple but more effective model that focuses on taking the inputs of a process and converting them to the right outputs continuing what we really have to deal with - The nature of human nature. If you manage a sales effort, you, of course, have certain inputs - your people and processes as they are today, your purpose, vision, goals and in a changing world you want to transform these into the performance you'll need over the next period, the next year or whatever. 

To improve your outcomes, you'll need to manage 3 things when it comes to people: attitudes, patterns of behaviors or habits and processes-formal and informal. Compare and contrast these three areas with what you spend your time focusing on, what your sales manager focuses on or even what each individual sales or business development professional focuses on. The challenge today is to offer a superior customer relationship and this starts with the salesperson and their ability to develop strong and productive relationships, their ability to efficiently turn their investment of time not only into sales but into a passion by the customer for what you do. To be able to do this, today's salespeople have to be at the top of their game and their processes...