How to Accelerate Your Sales With Sales Process Engineering w/ Justin Roff-Marsh [Episode 295]

Among the many topics Justin and I discuss in this episode are what is sales process engineering, why he believes it’s important to reduce a salesperson’s autonomy through a division of labor, why 99% of companies need both outbound and inbound sales, and the traits of salespeople who thrive in an engineered sales process environment. This is a fascinating look at the future of sales.

Joining me on this episode of Accelerate! is Justin Roff-Marsh. Justin is the author of The Machine: A Radical Approach to the Design of the Sales Function.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Justin explains that in the methodology of sales process engineering and giving autonomy to the salesperson is undesirable.

How the central idea of The Machine is the precise division of labor, or specialization.

Justin discusses why business executives have always wrongly assumed that the sales function is fundamentally different from the rest of the organization, and immune from being made more efficient.

Justin notes that, even in progressive sales companies, the sales person still owns the sales opportunity and the account, instead of the company. Justin calls that the tail wagging the dog.

Andy talks about The Machine looking beyond the tech industry to the broader sales world.

Marketing must subordinate to sales, by generating sales opportunities at the rate sales people consume them.

Justin tells why a successful company must be prepared to have a mix of inbound and outbound opportunities.

Justin discusses why work scheduling should be centralized.

You need to be able to push sales opportunities to salespeople at the rate of always having 60-90 opportunities in their queue. If you don’t have the offers, then you shouldn’t have the sales people.

Justin describes people who do best in the well engineered sales process environments are those with good communication skills that prospects enjoy talking to and have great product knowledge.

Why Justin believes it is essential to engineer and build sales process environments that are inherently measurable.