In the current era of oversupply and increasingly fierce market competition, the growth model of enterprises has gradually changed from product-driven to customer-driven. If an enterprise wants to break through the bottleneck of growth, relying on the expansion strategy of "piling up heads" and the sales method of "sales hero + Moutai" will only increase operating costs and dilute profits, which is not conducive to the healthy development of enterprises. In order to achieve replicable and large-scale growth, building the "sales force" of the enterprise is the key.
Sales power not only includes the professional ability of sales personnel, but also the ability to achieve scale growth in new fields without relying on individuals and relationships. It can be said that to increase sales is to improve productivity.
"2024 Special Project" of Digital Innovators", inviting Shi Yanze, CEO of Sales Easy, and Zhang Liesheng, former vice president of IBM Greater China and former president of SAP China, to jointly focus on ".How can companies build excellent sales force and achieve growth at scale? The topic unfolds.
Due to the length of the article, we have only excerpted some of the views for collation, and you can view the full live broadcast content on the SalesEasy account. ）
Shi Yanze:In the pursuit of scale expansion, companies generally believe that they only need to set up offices and recruit people around the world to run their business smoothly. However, the authorities are obsessed with bystanders, this logic is simple on the surface, but in fact, many companies have failed, what do you think is the reason for the failure?
Zhang Liesheng:Execution is all about setting clear goals, strategies, and designs, and then achieving effective implementation. In the past 30 years, many enterprises have adopted a brutal growth approach in the context of the demographic dividend and the relationship between supply and demand, which tends to have more demand than supply. However, with the changing times, this method is no longer applicable. Today's businesses need:Operate systematically from top to bottom, consider goals, strategy, organizational design, etc., rather than relying solely on the simple practices of the past.
Taking Huawei as an example, Huawei has successfully solved the problem that scale expansion no longer depends on people alone. First of all,Huawei's transformation is an all-round transformation, not only on the production side, but also on the sales side, but at present most Chinese companies have not done so, and secondly,Change is not something that can be done by one function alone, but it requires the joint efforts of the whole company, involving sales, marketing, R&D, procurement, finance, human resources and other functional departments, and finally, Ren Zhengfei and so onThe leadership has an outstanding commitment to driving changeThese are important factors for successful change.
In addition, the change is also very important, and the enterprise needs itHave a clear understanding of your business model, strategy, market, and customers, and the business needs to be aligned from top to bottomThese seemingly simple problems can become complex in practice. With a clear approach, businesses needImplement the style of play,Let different people do different thingsEstablish rules and regulations to regulate people's behavior, and open up all links through the processto enable the entire organization to execute in an orderly manner. If the organization is the bone of the enterprise, the process is the blood vessels, opening up all the muscles and all the links, so that the organization can move, which is what the enterprise needs to do step by step.
In the past 30 years, most of China's enterprises have mainly focused on the back-end, that is, production, chain, R&D, human resources, finance, etc. However, in a relatively short period of time, Huawei has undergone an overall transformation, not only in the back-end, but also in the development of the front-end market. In the past, companies mainly faced an environment of oversupply, and it was enough to develop good products and have a large number of talents. But now the environment has changed, market competition has intensified, customers have become smarter, purchasing decisions are more rigorous, and purchasing behavior is more rational. At this time, companies can no longer rely on the sales and marketing methods of the past, but need to work on the front end.
Chinese enterprises need to understand Huawei's transformation thinking, especially in the front-end market, how much effort has been spent on ERP in the past and how much effort will be spent on marketing service CRM in the next 20 years.
Shi Yanze:In the last wave of construction, enterprises focused on high quality and low cost of products, and front-end market services were not the primary consideration. From a management software perspective, the priority of digital construction has been true in the past, because when the product is not sold, the enterprise does not care about the marketing service.
However, with the emergence of product homogenization and fierce competition in the industry, the relationship between supply and demand has changed, and the product is difficult to sell, in this caseEnterprises need to shift from back-end product-driven to front-end customer-driven and focus on customer needs. Transformation is not a single function thing, but the system engineering of the entire company's strategy, specific to the sales dimension, how do enterprises need to define the sales force, and how to build the sales force system?
Zhang Liesheng:Businesses should:Sales power equals productivityIn the past 30 years, enterprises have paid more attention to the development of productivity, and now they should pay more attention to the development of sales force. The company provides services for the products or solutions it producesThe ability to persuade customers to accept and be willing to pay for them is the selling force.
Sales power is not just a competency at the individual level, but a competencyThe ability to capture business and profits across the scale of the enterprise. Sales force is not a single individual or a small range of affairs, but requires the coordination of the entire enterprise. Just like in the past, when developing productivity, there was an emphasis on connecting markets,The source of sales power also needs to be extended by the enterprise to ensure that the front-end work is properly handled before an effective sales strategy and method can be formulated. This process includes the planning, goals, positioning and other levels of the enterprise, and there are many factors that affect the sales force, and it does not depend on the number of sales personnel, but requires the establishment of a complete set of methodological systems.
Shi Yanze:The market competition is fierce, and enterprises must achieve healthy development while pursuing scale replication. How can companies move away from over-reliance on individuals and relationships and grow and be replicable in new areas?
Zhang Liesheng:In the past, sales was an island with less connection to the rest of the organization, especially to production and R&D. But now companies need to look at the big picture, and they need to think about it in a game of chess, and understand the role that sales plays in the whole enterpriseDetermine its positioning in the enterprise, secondly, againDefine your sales strategy, including identifying the target market, product positioning, customer needs, and ways to reach the market. After knowing these, you canCarry out effective landing operations. In order to implement the style of play, to be able to make its scale replicable, we need to start from the following four points:
1.Whether the end-to-end process is in place and replicable
The higher the degree of standardization of the process, the stronger the repetition, the more efficient the enterprise can achieve efficient cost control while ensuring customer experience. By refining the process of small granularity such as visiting customers, it is relatively standardized to ensure that sales do not ignore important details, which can better help enterprises improve efficiency.
2.Whether the content (product solution) is standardized
Ensuring consistency in the understanding of products and solutions among different salespeople across the organization can help eliminate discrepancies in information dissemination, prevent misunderstandings, and reduce negative impact on customers.
3.Whether the resource coordination is in place
If the quality of personnel is uneven and the matching of enterprise resources is not in place, the enterprise will still not be able to achieve repeatability and scale. Therefore, enterprises need to establish a system of resources to determine what kind of organization and position to use to transmit processes and content, in addition, the company's resources, systems and systems need to consider how to motivate, how to do performance, how to improve, so that people's enthusiasm, motivation, and interest can be satisfied.
4.Whether there is a digital system to support day-to-day operations
The process and content are very complex and important, and it is difficult to implement them in actual operation without the support of informatization and digitalization. Therefore, enterprises need to implement the process and content through the information system to ensure that it is implemented as soon as it is implemented for ten years.
However,Building a sales force is often the most overlooked part of a businessWhen the sales force is established, the digital system will naturally be needed.
Shi Yanze:Without the help of a digital system system, companies would not be able to refine key metrics. With the help of digital systems, enterprises can ensure the effective implementation of standardized processes through the inspection of each process node; Set key indicators and monitor execution to achieve timely detection and adjustment of problems, continuous optimization in daily operations, improve the strength of the profit system, and ensure that customer satisfaction is improved at every node.
The process is very important, but when it comes to implementing the sales process, the core sales VP who has grown up in the environment of the past few decades will resist and be difficult to implement.
Zhang Liesheng:Whether the sales like it or not, the process has to be implemented, and in the process of implementation, let the sales see the benefits of the process and the advantages that they can bring, and they will gradually change. The construction of the sales force system is inseparable from people, so after completing the construction of sales force at the enterprise level, it is necessary to fall from the top down to the sales layer and build from the level of "people".
On the one hand, we need to continuously improve the professional ability of the sales staff, and on the other hand, we need to improve their motivation so that they have the motivation to brave the peak, enhance their interest and maintain their enthusiasm for work.
The enterprise level and the human level are connected from top to bottom to form the construction map of the company's sales force. Sales force is a multiplicative effect between many factors, and it is necessary to ensure that each link such as process, content, resources, execution control, and personnel can achieve "1" as much as possible, so as to finally achieve the overall goal of "1". Most companies already have a certain sales force, and it is crucial to evaluate the current stage, whether the company's strategy is clear, whether the sales positioning is clear, and whether the entire sales team is clear about the company's direction and playing style. In addition, enterprises need to review whether the process is efficient and effective, and for some possible process faults, they need to sort out and optimize to ensure the coherence and optimality of the overall process, so as to better understand their current situation and formulate a clear direction and strategy for future sales force improvement.
Shi Yanze:: Many people wonder what is the relationship between sales force and customer focus. When product-centric, businesses pay less attention to customer experience; However, when it comes to customer centricity, companies must recognize that they have limited resources and cannot serve all markets and customers, so they need to be targeted in their target customer segments.
The core problem of achieving customer centricity is to be clear about who to serve. In the past, businesses have argued that scale is paramount, and customer positioning is not a key factor. However, in the current business environment, casual treatment of clients who don't fit the company's positioning can lead to losses. In the current environment, companies are shifting from scale growth to profit and cash flow, and the primary issue is to identify target customers. Customer-centric thinking needs to be reflected in the process, and a good process should aim to solve customer problems and continuously optimize to improve the customer experience.
Another key point is:Ensure end-to-end process integrity of enterprise processes. Enterprises and customers are connected throughout the life cycle, but enterprise teams often only focus on solving problems at a certain node, while customers expect to receive a full range of services at any time. Therefore, the company's process should be a complete end-to-end customer-centric process. Sales force is actually the ability to acquire customers and continue to grow, profitably, whileThe most powerful sales force is to stand in the customer's perspective, and integrate the customer-centric idea with the construction of sales force.