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Dips in sales numbers may not be a result
of economic conditions, but more about outdated sales
practices that fail to focus on the customer, according
to a recent Accenture study.
"What we've seen is that four or
five years ago, when the economy was flying high, sales
representatives sold with little effort," says
Troy Miller, an associate partner at Accenture. "In
the present economy some of the problems and inefficiencies
are coming more evident."
The study also shows that management is aware of the
problem: 41 percent of the respondents said that sales
are "good, but not outstanding," 28 percent
said their companies' sales performance is "average,"
and 26 percent said that their sales results are "below
average."
Study participants said their sales teams
are not ineffective due to a lack of potential customers,
but how they manage those leads. For instance, only
38 percent of respondents said they believe that their
companies were not generating enough leads, yet more
than half (55 percent) said they believe that their
sales organizations could not adequately analyze leads,
and 47 percent reported that leads are often not properly
handled.
"There has been a lot of time and
money spent in organizations around sales force automation
from an administrative point of view," says Eric
Gist, a partner in Accenture's Customer Relationship
Management service line and author of the report. "But
instead of administrative automation, what sales agents
really need are tools that help identify the right customer--tools
that can really alter the sales force's behavior around
the sales process for the better."
Among organizational changes considered
most likely to improve sales performance, refocusing
the sales force on high-value customers or opportunities
was the top choice, selected by 30 percent of respondents.
This was followed closely by better integrating sales
and marketing functions (28 percent), and by persuading
the sales forces to sell solutions rather than products
(23 percent).
Asked to identify technology changes with
the most potential value, the majority of respondents
(76 percent) said that better tools to capture and analyze
customer data would do the most to improve sales.
Gist agrees that more predictive analytics
are needed in organizations where sales effectiveness
is lacking. "There's a lot of analytics that can
prompt the sales agent to take action, giving the opportunity
to cross-sell or generate additional revenue in some
other way," he says. "Analytics for the most
part have been about 'Who have my best customers been?'
but now it has to be about 'Who will the next best customers
be?'"
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