Everything we’ve learned about changing customer demands over the last two years points to two undeniable facts:

1)     The overall sales experience must feel demonstrably different than your competition, and

2)     The opportunity to demonstrate that difference happens in a very short timeframe (most likely, the first 2-3 minutes of your first conversation with a customer).  In other words, to quote our friends at Corporate Visions, Inc., “your brand rests on the lips of your sales reps.”

The timeframe for sales experience differentiation is very short, but many support mechanisms were conceived as a means to achieve scale for a big direct sales force.  Think for a minute about the way your Sales Ops team is organized, its responsibilities, and the tools they create to support your biggest sales objectives.  Most likely, they are built to support an entire sales cycle.  The central organizing theory is very often the sales process itself.

But most sales processes aren’t very different from one another – in fact, many are off-the-shelf vendor solutions.  How well can that support the need for a highly differentiated conversation?

Customers are asking you to improve your short game – the first conversation (make us smarter!) – yet you’re organizing around the long game – the finely tuned funnel (mind the process!).

Several members I’ve spoken with recently are experimenting with new structures to better attack the short game in addition to the long.  These organizations have moved elements of their traditional Sales Ops outside of Sales and created an EVP or C-suite level customer advocacy or value group. 

The idea is to create space between the day-to-day battles of the funnel and supporting tools so the group can focus on creatively solving for macro sales outcomes – customer value – rather than solely waiting for signals from the sales funnel that may never appear on account of the vast pileup of stalled deals.

Hardly a scientific sample – but it does make you wonder: can a little physical separation from the sales force actually make it easier to differentiate the sales process?

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