Business development is difficult enough even under the most ideal circumstances. But when systems and order-to-cash process issues are hindering your sales team just in performing the basic functions of their job, it’s almost impossible to be successful. And the question on everyone’s mind is: “How much better could our results be if only we could solve operational barriers holding us back?”
In many cases, the right pieces are in place but it’s a matter of carefully aligning your people so that each of their individual efforts are focused to drive the best collective performance as a unit. This is no small feat but one of our recent engagements was a perfect example of how a good sales team can reach a whole new level of productivity when people are enabled to do their best work.
orWhen a subsidiary of one of the largest semiconductor chip manufacturers in the world was struggling to hit their aggressive growth target, it became clear they needed to reduce their sales burden and increase productivity. Their goal was to become a $1 billion organization in the near future but their sales and quote-to-cash process was hamstrung by over 10,000 SKUs and an approval cycle that took three weeks to deliver a quote.
Rather than active selling, the AE’s function had become closer to customer service. Lack of visibility and adherence to processes had led to excessive discounting and a tangled system of band-aids and workarounds. This resulted in vicious circle of delays and rework impacting the sales support, order management, renewals, and finance teams. As the CIO put it: “If our issue was technology, I could have fixed it. Our issue was lack of process and a need to change employee behavior.” So he engaged Proudfoot to design and implement a solution.
Read the full case study to explore how they found a path out of the misalignment and toward a much steeper growth trajectory than their leadership had imagined possible. With Proudfoot, in a short amount of time they were able to transform their quote-to-order process, streamline the product hierarchy, and integrate systems to support revenue and strategic priorities.
There was a fresh enthusiasm from the relief of so many obstacles being lifted, including a 50% reduction in visible product codes and 50% less time required to edit a multi-line quote. By the project’s end, the improved alignment of people, process, and technology led to $4.2M in forecast productivity benefits and the sales team had rallied around a new mindset of continuous improvement.
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