Martin Allison on pervasive and omnipresent change

A key reason we decided to set up Sales Fitness Group was our observations on the pace and volatile nature of “environmental” change received and absorbed by the sales profession. We wanted to help sales leaders and teams to continue their pursuit of performance and enable them with the right tools and best practices at the right time and value.

We had witnessed first hand the positive impact i-snapshot (now SalesRelay) had delivered for some of our clients and so we decided to buy the company and benefit from the data insights that can so easily be collected via our App. 

Our vision was to provide our consultants and thought-leaders with meaningful data collection capability which would be used with other diagnostic tools to generate with sales leaders ways of continually improving results. This SalesWisdom would help to formulate developmental interventions for SalesLevers that could deliver enhanced performance. 

In order to measure and prove progress then we needed to see the results in terms of how activities produced better behaviours and improved financial performance. We see this through our SalesWindow which is a combination of tools to help record and report results (SalesRelay) and then deliver more reliable forecasting (SalesCast). 

Given what has happened over the last 2 years our observations may be classed as prescient but we are not complacent and we wanted to share some of the useful developments and re-scopings we have seen from our clients over the last 6-12 months.  This is not an exhaustive list and we really do recommend you speak with us should you like to hear more than those below.    

Before giving these examples we want to highlight six important principles we always seek to achieve to ensure our customers and their people are fully engaged in using the Apps and systems. 

• Firstly, data should be easily and quickly captured and retrieved. 
• Secondly it must be secured so it is only accessed by the right people and for the right purposes. 
• Thirdly data once captured should not be re-requested unless necessary and where possible should be relayed to other systems rather than asking salespeople to re-input into different systems thereby duplicating work and wasting time. 
• Fourthly, the system should be designed to enable those activities and behaviours that will produce the strategic selling results that are being sought.
•  Fifthly, making the users lives easier by tailoring the system to their vocabulary and to take out other tasks or work they may do manually. 
• Sixth, the information reported must be presented in ways that are relevant, useful and valued by the users. 

Recently, we have seen a surge in requests from our clients to begin upgrading and enhancing their content collection and reporting eg. probability of a sale or the time spent. Our ability to provide “retrieved data” easily accessed prior to meetings has been popular, as has including credit data on customers as well as current year targets and prior year figures. Several customers have also begun to ask their salespeople to include their revised estimate of the likely annual sales per customer.  

Another group of clients has added items to collect data on competitors, the market, compliments or complaints and pricing comments from customers, using these for discussions at Board level.  Others are using the system to collect photos of promotional materials or displays, mileage, stock counts or even signed contracts/sales orders. 

Some clients have segmented their customer base and then tracked the number of visits, the type of person met and the success or failure of interactions – some have seen impressive outcomes as a result. 

There are many other examples of how our clients continue to enhance and improve their data collection and reporting capabilities and we are privileged and take great joy in sharing and learning from our collective sales leadership thinkers – we hope to continue to be of service to you for many years to come despite these challenging and changing times.