According to Dr. Deming, the critical component is your system, or process. For the purposes of our discussion, we’ll be focusing on the process that has to do with generating sales–your selling process. In my experience it doesn’t matter how talented, educated, or experienced your salespeople are, or how hard they work at it, there remains a very large gap between the actual results they will produce and the results they could have produced had someone been paying attention to process. In today’s ultra competitive business environment, where the margin between winning and losing is so slight, I am surprised at how many companies continue to ignore an area that holds such potential for drastic increases in productivity and bottom line results.It’s easy to say that your salespeople could be producing better results. It’s not so easy to actually demonstrate it and then formulate a workable plan to do something about it. Most managers would agree there’s always room for improvement. The challenge lies in knowing where to look in order to find the weaknesses in the selling process that are holding your people back. It’s hard to stop the bleeding when you can’t find the cut–or worse yet–when you don’t even know there’s a cut. Most companies don’t even know where to start. In that sense, it’s easier to manage people than to engineer process improvement. It’s always easier to treat the symptom than to actually diagnose and treat the underlying cause. The result is a selling environment where the true reasons for most mistakes and failures go unaddressed and are blamed on people instead. Companies who operate this way often find themselves grappling with the same basic problems year after year with the only change being the people doing the grappling. It’s an ineffective and expensive proposition, certainly much more so than teaching your sales managers how to apply the principles of Sales Process Management.

Sales Process Management (SPM) promises to do more than just identify and improve the weaknesses in your selling process. Another major benefit you will enjoy when you make the commitment to SPM is seeing the best practices in your selling process identified and duplicated across your entire organization. I’ve heard many leaders talk about implementing best practices but have seen very few of them actually manage to consistently achieve it.

I first stumbled upon the benefits of SPM a few years ago when I was on the other side of the management fence selling online recruiting solutions for a major Internet company. The Internet bubble had burst and the economy was starting to slow down. As a result, our prospects and clients weren’t hiring at the same rapid pace as they had been before.

Sales started to slump. Salespeople who had always hit their numbers were now coming up short every month. Management focused immediately on inspecting and monitoring the individual performance of the salespeople. The decision came back that we were not making the necessary number of daily sales calls. A resolution was made to mandate ratcheting up the activity levels on the floor. If we failed to make X percent more dials every day we could be penalized or otherwise punished. Incentives were introduced to reinforce and reward the required behaviors.

Employee morale plummeted. Salespeople expressed concern that management was unfairly targeting them for blame. Management expressed concern that perhaps many salespeople had been taking advantage of the situation during the good times and didn’t really care about the company, or, worse yet, were lazy and needed to be weeded out. The mandate had its intended effect… at least on call volume. The average number of daily sales calls on the floor did increase dramatically. Unfortunately this increase in the number of sales calls did not result in a corresponding increase in sales and revenue.

During this time, my focus was on finding something that would work to produce measurable results for me. Initially I ratcheted up my activity levels too. In order to accomplish this I began coming in early and staying late. After a few months of this I noticed that although I was working harder and longer, and sacrificing time with my family to do it, I wasn’t seeing any appreciable return on my investment of additional time and energy. I began to realize that I wasn’t addressing the real problem. The market had changed dramatically while my sales process had remained the same. I was doing the exact same things I had been doing when the market was hot. The only difference was that I was now doing a lot more of them.

I began to analyze how the marketplace was different now and to think about changes I could make to my own approach and what the results were likely to be. Unwittingly I was applying SPM to my own selling process!

I recognized that during the time the economy had been booming almost every company seemed to be hiring. A salesperson could just pick up the phone and dial a prospect (seemingly at random), and chances were that they would be hiring or could refer you to someone who was. I had always kept data on the number of sales calls I was making and the results and success ratios my efforts generated. The data showed that before the bubble had burst, nearly one in three of my sales calls resulted in a lead. It was the perfect market for making as many sales calls as you could possibly fit into the day.

The present situation was very different. I was now making almost 30 dials, on average, to get to that same lead. I did the math and found that increasing my outbound sales calls by the suggested 50 percent wasn’t going to get me even close to where I needed to be. I would have needed almost a 1000 percent increase in call volume to come close!

Another difference was that, whereas during the boom, I could approach a prospect without specific knowledge of their business or hiring plans and effectively communicate using very general terms, now, leads were so few and far between that I needed to have a more thorough knowledge, and a specific, customized solution prepared in order to engage the prospect in any kind of meaningful discussion. Each lead was too rare and too valuable to risk losing on a random, generalized cold call.

I concluded that I needed to change my selling process from one in which I was making a higher volume of random sales calls, to one where I was making a lower volume of more targeted inquiries. Talk about flipping conventional wisdom on its head! I couldn’t argue with the numbers, however, and, after some initial hand wringing, my manager couldn’t either. He agreed to let me try out my new process.

The new approach began to yield results immediately. I was opening up far more new cases than ever before and my sales numbers jumped up higher than they had been when the economy was booming! I began to apply the same thinking to every process I was using.

First, I would identify all of the activities within my current selling process. Then I would analyze each one to try to understand its true importance to advancing the sale and producing the intended outcome. Whenever possible I would look for patterns and ways to measure the cumulative results of each activity or behavior. I soon found that by taking the time to isolate and understand the role each activity played within the context of my whole selling process, I could better reason from cause to effect and more accurately pin point the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. The result was a sort of behavior pattern algorithm that told an accurate story of my process from beginning to end.

After gaining an understanding of exactly what I was doing and how each component of my process contributed to the outcome I wanted to achieve, I would look for ways to improve upon my results. I would repeat this process over and over again; continuously looking to identify inefficiencies and replace them with new, improved ways of doing things better. Often the improvements would come as a result of talking with and observing other top performing salespeople. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could more readily identify what others were doing differently in the same area that was allowing them to perform at a higher level and immediately incorporate it into my own process.

The results were immediate and dramatic, enabling me to finish 2002 as the top telesales rep in the entire company. Since then, I’ve successfully introduced SPM to my clients and to my own salespeople and have never seen it fail to produce the same outstanding results. SPM is easy to implement and works in any situation, economy, environment, industry, or company. It will work for you too.

The reality is that you need to keep your business model and processes within the boundaries of OSHA law to prevent lawsuits, and regulatory fines. Nevertheless, let me explain to you one case study and example, something in my own company prior to retirement which always bothered me. We used pressure washers and steam cleaners to clean fleets of vehicles under contract.We would wash Rent-A-Cars, company fleets, school buses, post office jeeps, patrol cars, car sales lots, and trucks for trucking companies. When you use a pressure washer over 2500 PSI you are supposed to use a long wand with a 15-degree or greater tip on the end. This allows the water to spray out in a fan so you don’t cut your finger off. That makes sense right? Sure it does.

However, we found that often times school bus yards had school buses parked way to close together. In doing this you could not clean them with a long wand and maneuver between the buses. And if you tried often the wand would catch on this side of the bus, and it would jab the gun into your body. Not good. Especially when it was cold out with ice, or when there was diesel fuel that had leaked on the ground.

That is an accident waiting to happen. Therefore, it made sense to move the buses out to an area where they could be cleaned. Of course trying to get in between buses, and open the door of the engine compartment to start them up, and bleed the system, could have the door coming back and sandwiching your head, while you were on slippery ground. We chose the lesser of two evils and shortened the gun wand length for safety. By doing this we never had another accident. I believe this is a good case study in risk management. Even if we technically violated OSHA rules, safety first I say. Think on it.

However, before getting to the issue of innovating a business procedure, there’s a critical preliminary question: Is the procedure necessary?

I recently worked with a company that performs repair services on electronic appliances. The company had a detailed “inventory procedure” that was completed every morning before the store opened. The procedure required an employee to print a report of all “open” repair orders from the computer. Then, the employee handling the inventory procedure that morning checked to be sure that every appliance in for repair was actually in the store. The employee manually checked off each appliance on the list.This process took over an hour each morning, and the employees hated it. When I began asking questions about the procedure, I learned that the completed checklist was filed away and never used again. And, if they could not find an appliance shown on the printed list, a notation was made on the list, but no effort was made to determine what happened to the missing appliance. When I asked why they did this, the answer was “that procedure is required in our business policies and procedures”. After discussing the procedure with several people, including store managers, I learned that there was no reason to continue that daily procedure.

There’s no bigger waste of time and resources than making an effort to optimize a business procedure that does not need to be performed in the first place.

Take a look at your own internal business procedures and be sure there is a valid business reason for continuing those procedures. If the procedure is necessary, then you can begin looking for ways to streamline that procedure.

The Project Management Professional certification is generating a lot of interest amongst the corporate world as well as with individuals of all trades, backgrounds and professions. Implemented by the Project Management Institute in September 2006, the PMP certification has been obtained by more than 310,000 individuals worldwide; such popularity is due to the demand of corporations and businesses to have knowledge project managers to ensure their own success and credibility. The certification exam is based on 6 principles: initiating the project, planning the project, executing the project, monitoring and controlling the project, closing the project and professional and social responsibility. PM-Express’s preparation courses covers all of those 6 essential principles of project management and ensure the ability of each trainee to understand the material presented in class.The PMP certification obtained by trainees is valid worldwide; this is very important for self-employed project managers who prefer to sell their services to individual clients rather than work in-house for a larger corporation. With an internationally recognized certificate, project managers can now easily obtain employment in businesses and organizations from anywhere in the world and be confident in their project managing skills. Being PMP certified is certainly a renowned credential and the knowledge gained through the exam will impress future clients and employers alike.

In order to pass the Project Management Institute’s exam and obtain certification, individuals and corporations and highly encouraged to sign-up for PM-Express’s preparation courses. These courses will greatly help covering all material found in the certification exam and will also give you valuable knowledge and experience to add to your resume. The courses offered by PM-Express include PMP Exam Preparation, EVMS Compliance, PgMP Exam Preparation, Applied Systems Engineering and OPM3. All these courses will make you and your employees the best project managers to be found and will greatly improve your chances of successfully passing the PMP certification exam.

Just like with any type of exam and certification, the key to confidently obtain the PMP certification is to be adequately prepared. By signing-up for PM-Express’s preparation courses you will not only thoroughly prepare for the exam but undertake a unique immersion experience in the world of project management. Preparing the exam with PM-Express is the best way to ensure success and confidently train in project management whether you are part of a corporation or business, or a self-employed individual.

It is significance to get hold of different quotes since each situation and circumstance is different hence an insurance coverage policy is made in such a way that it is designed for the requirements of a specific client. If you run a service-based organization, you should visit Hiscox professional indemnity provider website to acquire affordable professional indemnity insurance. Now that we have discussed your options for attaining commercial business insurance it’s time for you to get out there and talk to some insurance agents regarding your wants and needs for your company.