What is Sales Process Management, and how can it dramatically increase your bottom line?
If you're like most
people we talk with, you may not be familiar with the latest buzzwords, i.e.,
"Sales Process Management". This
is a new twist to an old concept, and can best be described by the following
analogy:
If you take a tour of any manufacturing plant, you will see "process management" in play. Most plants are organized into an "assembly line" structure, where a constant flow of "value-adding" activities occur.
At the beginning of the
line, you'll see raw materials introduced, and some "process" being
applied to those raw materials. After
the first phase of production, the "work-in-process" product moves to
the next station in the line, and so forth, until a "finished" product
is created. At each phase in production, value is added to the materials, and
this value adding process is usually accomplished by a specialist.
For example, a technician will mount a circuit board to the main mother
board of the component.
At each phase of production, management is able to measure output, and also determine waste. It is the job of the manufacturing manager to see that each step in the production process is conducted at the peak of efficiency, and the amount of waste, etc. is reduced to within levels tolerated by the design of the system. Production reports will tell management the cost of each "value-adding" step, and he/she will be able to predict production capacity at any level of volume.
Now that we've had an introduction
to "process management", let's look at how this can apply in a sales
or customer service organization. Like
a manufacturing system, a sales process system will have raw materials and a
sequence of value-adding steps, which eventually produce a predictable, measurable
result, i.e., sales or in the case of physician relationship managment -- additional
referrals.
The challenge for a relationship
manager is similar to that of the production manager, namely, "engineering"
the right activities to occur at each step in the process, matching the right
skills, i.e., "specialists" to those steps, overcoming any bottlenecks,
and producing at the peak of efficiency with the minimum of waste.
For example, a well
designed Sales Process might have the following steps:
1) Identificaion of new opportunities using Advertising, Physician Meetings, the Internet, etc. by the Marketing Dept.,
2)
Incorporation of new Opportunities into the Physician database, using
a Sales Process Automation system,
3)
Qualification of new Doctors, and scheduling follow-up for presentations
at Doctor's offices,
4)
Electronic Distribution of information to Phyisician Relationship Managers,
5) Recording of Notes and History of Physician Meetings.
6) Identification of Issues
and Problems and Automated Delegation to Responsible Persons.
7)
Automatic Call Reporting and Management Reports produced by the Sales
Process Automation system.
MarketWare Sales Process Automation can be a tremendous tool in standardizing the Relationship Managment Process for you.
Give us a call to arrange your meeting with one of our Consultants and we can show you how you can benefit from this exciting new technology.
Bob Bartel, CPA MBA
Consultant