Unlocking Commercial Productivity for Business Success
In the dynamic world of business, a prevailing belief has been that achieving revenue growth necessarily entails increasing sales and marketing expenses in tandem. This widespread notion has led many leaders in sales and marketing to adopt the view that achieving sustained improvements in productivity over an extended period of time is a daunting challenge. However, research suggests that this perspective might not be entirely accurate.
Statistics show that common approaches aimed at increasing commercial productivity often yield underwhelming results. For example, focusing solely on cost-cutting might hinder long-term growth. Similarly, an overreliance on the latest sales or marketing software or unproven artificial intelligence tools can lead to escalating costs without a proportionate increase in revenue. Setting unrealistic productivity goals with no tangible path to achieving them can demoralize sales representatives and cause them to miss their targets.
So, what sets productivity leaders apart? These champions systematically pursue three key practices over an extended period: refining their go-to-market model, elevating front-line productivity, and identifying efficiencies in sales and marketing support.
Enhancing the go-to-market model involves reassessing how sales and marketing resources are deployed based on anticipated future customer spending. Forward-thinking companies balance account assignments based on the expected return rather than relying solely on historical data and outdated coverage models. Leading organizations adjust their customer segmentation and reassign customers to more profitable routes to market, utilizing lower-cost coverage such as inside sales, offshore roles, and e-commerce as needed.
Elevating the productivity of individual sales representatives on the front line is another vital practice. This can be achieved by creating data-informed sales strategies, providing consistent training and coaching, and facilitating higher quality interactions between sales representatives and their managers.
Running a lean support team can lead to substantial savings or allocate operating expenses more effectively to customer-facing sales activities. Optimizing support spending involves identifying the right digital and automation tools that streamline complex processes.
Productivity leaders execute tactics from each of these categories systematically. For instance, one technology company revamped its coverage strategy, achieving significant improvements in commercial productivity over several consecutive years.
Commercial productivity leaders demonstrate a deliberate and repeatable approach to driving change. They appoint a clear owner of commercial productivity, often with a dedicated role reporting directly to a top executive. This owner oversees a backlog of tactics, tracks progress, and ensures the alignment of processes and behaviors throughout the organization.
A mature commercial operations team plays an essential role in modeling sales and marketing capacity, communicating with the finance department, and continually revising go-to-market strategies to ensure consistency across different regions and business lines.
Sustaining gains in commercial productivity is not only beneficial for companies across various industries and economic cycles but also essential in the current macroeconomic landscape. Just as winners and losers emerged during previous economic shifts, the ability to make strategic trade-offs between top-line and cost-saving actions will determine who accelerates ahead of competitors in the coming years.
