Blue Mine Group

Building an effective sales capability

Building an effective sales capability is central to successfully taking your innovation to market. Developing such a capability is much more than hiring good salespeople – although that is frequently (but not always) a key ingredient. It is about developing a professional, systematic set of processes, providing the right training and coaching, implementing the right metrics and rewards, all with the right context of other strategies and capabilities.

In Blue Mine Group’s innovation methodology, sales effectiveness is predicated on several critical elements. You must have clear market focus on an identifiable customer. Your customer must have an urgent need, that is not currently being satisfied by alternate options. You offering must meet your customer’s needs in all key respects – product functionality, pricing, availability, support, and many others. You must have in place a sound marketing communications program, that provides effective messaging, relationship and reputation building initiatives. Your operations, delivery and support processes must deliver great customer experiences, that drive loyalty and referrals. Absent any of these, no matter how good your sales process, you will struggle to get traction and win customers.

Our sales effectiveness model comprises five key elements: organization, prospecting, account development, sales opportunities and sales management. We will discuss each of these over the next few posts.

Talking to customers

While you can gather some information on customer needs from online research, nothing beats talking directly to prospective customers. This should be one of the earliest market development activities a new venture undertakes, and it should never end.

The fundamental requirement for winning customers is to talk to them on an ongoing basis, and to continuously refine every aspect of your market development model until you have perfected the formula for unleashing the market’s potential.

The rise of social media offers a powerful new option for companies to understand customers and their needs. Paying attention to, and participating in, the ongoing conversations online about your market and product category enables you to get the pulse of your target customers quickly.