In Sales Productivity, Velocity Matters

Learned this week of a sales manager who's raised the white flag for 2010 after one month's sales effort. Her team's January numbers were down 22% over last January and for 2010 their firm's looking for 18% growth over last year.

The good news? There's still 11 months to go. The bad news? The specific things that she and her team might do to course-correct for the rest of the year aren't clear. Worse than that, it may take a few months to detect the impacts on future sales of their course-correcting tactics. If they get it wrong, they'll have that much less time in which to try other things, then even less time remaining in which to detect whether or not their latest tactics have 'turned the tide'.

This manager's situation underscores how velocity matters. Victor Cheng notes that one of the keys to recession-proofing a business is to shrink decision cycles. In sales, this requires sharper, faster, feedback on the impacts of sales efforts. With it, sales leaders can detect, quickly, whether or not a tactic is working. If it isn't working, there's still plenty of time left in which to try other tactics and strive for more impact.

Faster decision cycles in sales create two advantages: lowered costs of mistakes and enhanced craftsmanship in sales practices. As Clayton Christensen notes, those who fail fast, gain much - fear of failure is surpassed with a curiosity to succeed and the learned skills with which to do so.

11 months to go? Bring it on.