Optimum Sales – Why does a sales strategy fail or succeed?
The success or failure of a sales strategy depends on two key factors:
- Their proper planning
- Its correct implementation.
The most common situations for which we are hired at Optimum in the Business Unit of Commercial Strategy Implementation are to rescue a failing strategy and place it in a position of competitive success.
When we have a situation where the strategy is failing, the management team must, first of all, review their strategic planning, and then analyze the activities for effective implementation.
To conduct an evaluation of the commercial strategy planning and identify if we have any projection errors, we must analyze the following points:
- Review of the plausible baseline scenarios that have been used to define the strategy.
- Review of the mission, vision, values, and beliefs of the corporate strategy and their effect on the business strategy.
- Evaluation of the chosen competitive position: is it coherent?
- What is the market demand situation?
- What is the company’s situation in relation to its competitors?
- Internal analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
- Review of objectives: Volume, financial, market, by channel, by customers… What is their interdependence?
- What are the main KPIs for evaluating strategic implementation? What are the accepted levels of deviation?
- What are the key business processes in each channel?
- What have been the key projects that needed to be developed to launch the new strategy?
If we identify specific errors in the strategy planning, we must establish appropriate corrective plans to reorient and recover it. The situation we most commonly encounter is the lack of understanding and adoption at the lower levels compared to the top management of the company.
If the error stems from a poor implementation, given that the strategic planning analysis is correct, at Optimum we propose evaluating the following elements:
- Is the understanding of the strategy homogeneous? From top management to the most operational department of the company.
- Are marketing and sales aligned?
- Are the objectives consistent in both quantity and quality and orientation?
- Have the minimum commercial maturation periods of the clients been correctly assessed?
- Have the commercial action plans been correctly established by channel, customer type, territory…?
- Are the business processes clearly defined and executed?
- Have the necessary resources (financial and talent) been articulated for the execution of the commercial action plans?
- Are the compensations aligned with the new strategy?
- Has the performance of the teams been developed in advance enough for them to successfully execute the strategy?
- Does the metric used provide sufficient information to correct the deviations?
We know perfectly well from our experience that 80% of the strategies that fail do so more due to errors in operational implementation than due to errors in strategic planning. From our point of view, to succeed in strategic implementation, it is necessary to generate broad and fluid communication processes for the new strategy and to provide them with the necessary resources at all times. The best tool is the commercial action plans and their close monitoring.
| David Galve | General Director www.linkedin.com/in/davidgalve |  |
