What is A Brutal Obsession with Sales Fundamentals ?
Ask sales managers if they are concerned about sales performance, invariably they will answer “yes”
But if you ask them “Are you BRUTALLY OBSESSED with your sales fundamentals?”, you might not get a clear answer.
The reason ? – there is a difference between being concerned or worried about your sales performance vs being BRUTALLY OBSESSED about sales fundamentals that LEAD the development of these sales nos.
A BRUTAL OBSESSION WITH SALES FUNDAMENTALS or BOSF was a concept first coined by P&G to depict how they would run their sales teams and has since been adopted by many companies who need to deliver consistent sales performance.
BOSF is based on the concept of closely following LEADING INDICATORS OF SALES for in market excellence.
The Total Sales Value that a CEO or a Sales Director gets to see every month is a LAGGING INDICATOR, i.e. it indicates but cannot prevent bad sales performance as by the time it gets to the top, the damage has already been done.
On the other hand, there are several sales productivity measures both in B2C and B2B businesses that FLAG actual field performance real time and LEAD the sales performance. These provide early warning signals that a sales team is not responding to opportunities in the market which would need further assistance on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
Being OBSESSED about the Leading Indicators of Sales is for all team members and even the CEO to review results by these indicators.
A few examples of LEADING INDICATORS : Ratio of Calls Connected : Meetings for an Inside Sales Team or the Pipeline Inflow/Outflow by BDM for a B2B business, Productive Calls ratio or the no of SKUs sold per call for a B2C business.
There are about 20 Leading Indicators for B2B and 7 Leading Indicators for B2C that serve to deliver the “pulse” of the sales organisation.
A Brutal Obsession with Sales Fundamentals works as follows :
Setting a target for each Leading Indicator that are relevant to your business and reflect sales team performance and productivity
Obtaining timely data on actual performance vs targets on a pre determined basis (daily/weekly/monthly, the more frequent the better)
Being uncompromising on any deviations – normally making the sales discussions revolve around the Leading Indicators gives you a quick solution to the problem
Agreeing action plan and FOLLOW UP, FOLLOW UP AND FOLLOW UP till the next review
Repeating this for 365 days in a year, tirelessly…
Sounds simple enough, right ? But The BOSF culture is a state of mind that looks at details in the field/with customers for sales solutions and refuses to take no for an answer. The practitioners of BOSF have a thankless job and are often the subject of much derision within the company.
Because being obsessed means that it is going to consume your sales and working life with the sole objective of improving sales productivity.
Think BOSF. Think Sales Productivity.