The notion of process management is not new, of course, and is well developed in many other areas of business, such as production and supply chain management. In our experience, the ways that a company puts itself out into the market place are disjointed and seldom thought of as an area where process management has a place.
Impact of a Lack of Process Management in the Marketing and Sales Activity
In our experience with many companies, we almost always find that the “front-end” of the company – the ways in which it puts itself out into the market place - are disjointed and seldom even thought of as an area where process management has a place.
Symptoms we have consistently found include:
Marketing and sales are not integrated – Advertising and public relations have their own managers, methods, goals and ways of being measured, separate from sales. Results include expensive promotion campaigns that are not coordinated with field sales people, for example.
Sales are "star" based – A small group of very talented individuals frequently secure most of the sales volume, with a larger, less effective group “tagging along” in their wake. How and why the “stars” are successful usually remains very much a set of personal capabilities, not the result of a consciously managed set of processes.
Coaching Only – Sales management is seen as a coaching-like activity, not a specific, thought-out integrated set of processes. It ends up being focused on personality attributes like confidence and ingenuity. This is not to say that coaching does not have a place – it does – but it should be in
addition to, not instead of, a rational set of integrated processes.
Inability to improve – When sales management is not process based, it is incapable of being improved. So, the company has good years and bad years, depending on the “stars” it has on its selling team.
It is the last of these that makes the case for a business process orientation to how a company’s marketing and sales activities are managed – so that their performance can be consistently, repeatedly improved over time.
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