Is Performance Complimentary in Engineering?

The idea that we're going to have a salesperson earning $300,000 a year and driving around in a shiny black Porsche is just not going to fly well. In most sort of heavy engineering environments where we work, they eliminated that years ago because it's unconscionable. And our position is that perform, if you're in sales, it's no different from any other role in the organization. Performance should be compulsory, not optional.

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Justin Roff-Marsh is the founder of Ballistix and the author of The Machine: A Radical Approach to the Design of Sales Function. The myth that sales generates revenue is debunked as salespeople don’t directly influence the 3 most common reasons that businesses lose accounts: poor operational performance, pricing, and product.

Justin then discusses why sellers should shift their focus from conversion rates to opportunity flow and then dives into why he believes conversion is antagonistic to deal flow. Most sales teams conversion rates are already impossibly high—and the constraint they face in increasing sales is that their opportunity flow is dangerously low.

HIGHLIGHTS

Sales does NOT generate revenue, operations does
Rename the CRO to Chief New Revenue Officer
Incentive Pay: Its impact on productivity and team performance
The dangers of defining a "sales opportunity" too narrowly
A compelling proposition makes strangers prepared to talk to sellers

QUOTES

Debunking the myth that sales generates revenues - Justin: "If you look at why businesses lose accounts, in most businesses, the 3 most common reasons in descending order of frequency are poor operational performance. The company breaks its promises, number 1. Number 2 is pricing. Too expensive."

"Number 3 is product. Insufficient range or competitors have a product that's technically performing better... which of those 3 are salespeople responsible for? Or which of them do they directly influence? None. Operations is responsible for all 3 of those."

Selling is a team sport so compensation should reflect that - Justin: “When we strip away all responsibilities from salespeople apart from selling conversations, it becomes a team sport. We have a promotions team that's generating ops. We have an engineering team that's working with salespeople on solution design and budgets and proposals and so on."

"And it no longer makes sense to say ‘Well, we're going to compensate members of this team on a piece-rate based upon the assumption that we want them all to work as fast as possible.’ We don't. We're trying to maximize throughput for the team as a whole."

Find out more about Justin and get his book in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinroffmarsh/
Website: https://salesprocessengineering.net/
Company website: https://ballistix.com/
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Radical-Approach-Design-Function/dp/1626342245

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