Senior Management and Sales

Here are some comments and questions that we have received while discussing with the senior management of our customer organizations.

“If there were only 50 sales people instead of the current 100 people in our German sales team, would we be able to keep or even increase our sales results?”

“We know how to manage production, logistics and R&D, but sales is a black hole that is very difficult to address. At the same time sales is the part of the organization that has the focal role in the predictability of our business.”

“The sales people emphasize the role of long lasting personal relationships in getting major sales. At the same time the procurement function at the customer end is getting more professional. Are we too afraid of touching the structure of our sales organization?”

“We are lacking a common language between the product, service and sales organizations. We have not been able to harness the whole organization to create value for the customer and to develop our own sales.”

“Everyone in the executive management team should act as top coach. But how could I measure the amount and quality of coaching?”

“Our customer satisfaction and the sales competence are those things that will predict our future cash flows. Unfortunately our customer satisfaction indexes are merely a set of tiring numbers that do not tell us on how to develop our operations. We have invested in sales training, but we can not measure and follow the solution selling capability of our sales teams.”

“As the CEO I am often invited into the important closing negotiations. I need to carefully think of the value that I can give to my own sales team – a bigger mandate to give out concessions or the perceived appreciation of the customer? Should I be a top negotiator?”

Precedo Consulting helps the management team to develop world class sales organizations, and ensures that the management team has the concrete path and clear metrics to track the results. We support our customers to make the sales an integral part of the management team work.