Getting Tight – One Experience

Innovation in Healthcare
September 16, 2015
Innovation in Healthcare Part 2
September 29, 2015

Getting TightHave you ever struggled with trying to understand what someone is talking about? I recently sent a text to a colleague, in which I was confirming the location and time for a lunch meeting. His text response was “tight”. Tight? Did he mean to send “right”, like he forgot, or was the time not going to work because it was too close to an afternoon meeting. I was confused and sent him a response asking him if there was a better time or day to meet. Apparently “tight” meant AWESOME…

 

I have worked in sales organizations for over 20 years and have heard all of the “sales speak” about where a prospect is in the sales cycle. I have heard “The deal is coming in this month because…”: “… because I got a head nod”, “…because we have a good relationship and she trusts me”, “…because he doesn’t know it, but he needs our solution”, “…because she knows she needs to make a change”, “…because he would be crazy not to go with us”, “…because I never miss my monthly quota”. So many “becauses”, so much sales speak, so hard to make any sense of it all.

 

Early in my career, as we were growing our sales team, we struggled with pipeline management and forecasting. We did not have a common sales terminology, associated with a defined sales process, and we were not always on the same page. New sales leaders struggled to effectively coach their growing teams on their sales funnel. Marketing had no idea how they could help move the sales pipeline along. Product development was mystified to why their widgets weren’t moving in the market. We were all so disconnected because we did not have a common language, we were ineffective, inefficient, and in trouble.

 

We became much more productive once we all (Sales, Marketing, Product, Services) adopted a customer-centered sales process as our common language to communicate about the buyer’s decision making and implementation process.   We also started using business systems to capture meaningful data that allowed us to become more data driven. We started to understand our sales pipeline and could talk about sales velocity. Sales forecasting became more accurate, because sales leaders became more effective at coaching sales folks on each deal. Marketing was able to understand how they could impact sales pipelines with timely sales campaigns. Product got great information about the market, from concise feedback from the sales team, furthering product development.

 

With one initiative, adopting a common language, we measurably improved in so many areas. If you have a struggling sales organization or a sales team that is growing beyond your managers current capabilities, then take a look at how you talk about your buyer’s decision making process. Is there confusion? Does everyone in the business understand the feedback your customer facing teams are delivering? In my opinion, it was the best thing our Sales Team, and the Business Team did – we grew sales, improved our brand, and it was “TIGHT”!

 

Join the conversation?

 

Has your team gone through something similar? Have you been on a team that lacked a common language and caused inefficiencies? Leave a comment below and share what happened.

 

By:

Jim Williams, M.B.A.

Total Innovation Group Inc., Associate

and

Sam O’Rear, M.A.

Total Innovation Group Inc., Senior Partner

 

Published by TIGI