The Machine

Forget What You Know

Despite tremendous changes in organizations and the marketplace, sales operations in companies look much as they did five decades ago. The conventional wisdom that most firms invariably follow results in familiar sales organizations under the leadership of a manager and with autonomous outside salespeople. Salespeople maintain the primary relationship with customers, and earn commissions for new and repeat sales. They immerse themselves in the process of selling – from generating leads, managing paperwork and inputting their activity into reporting systems to closing sales and owning the customer relationship thereafter. It all sounds reasonable until you realize that most salespeople spend hardly any time selling. In fact, selling accounts for only about 10% of their daily schedules.

Solving a broken sales system and building a sales machine involves great effort and radical transformation. You should close all of your field sales offices; stop hiring external salespeople and bring those you have in-house; drop all commissions and bonuses; divorce sales from production; don’t let salespeople handle renewals or repeat business; and ensure that ...