Sales Force Productivity - Eight Practices That Ensure Your Sales Success

We have never needed to improve sales productivity more than we do in this dreadful economy. For decades, businesses have embraced  productivity and cost controls in operational functions like manufacturing and distribution; programs like Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma and LEAN are thriving all over the map. Except in the sales department. We suggest that sales organizations can benefit dramatically from adopting some basic principles of productivity management, simple business techniques that lower costs, improve customer profitability and retention, and reduce sales-person turnover.   This article explores the eight key practices that contribute to productivity. Each practice can be either a contributor if it is in place, or an inhibitor if it isn't.

Practice #1: The Prospect Profile

If you don't have a documented prospect profile then you may be lengthening the sales cycle and driving your team to pursue under-qualified or unprofitable deals.

 

Sales people probably spend more time prospecting and qualifying than they do anything else. Sales people who have a documented prospect profile can qualify opportunities more quickly and with greater accuracy than those that have no such guidelines. The basic prospect profile includes standard factual data, such as industry sector, number of employees, annual revenue, and so on. The most effective profiles go beyond these facts and include more qualitative characteristics that describe buyer motivation, trigger events, corporate values and other psychographic elements. 

 

Practice #2: Clear Targets and Incentives for Acquiring New Customers

New-customer acquisition is clearly an element of sales success. In fact, it's the reason your sales people spend so much time prospecting and qualifying. Contribute to productivity by setting clear goals for acquiring new business, and provide incentives. When setting new-customer targets, establish goals for revenue from new customers, and also establish separate goals for numbers of new customers.

Practice #3: Clear Targets and Incentives for Retaining Current Customers

No matter how important it is to acquire new customers, it costs a lot more than retaining current ones. If you are not giving your sales people specific targets for retaining current customers, your productivity is in jeopardy. This practice ensures that sales people will invest effort in keeping the customer happy, and encouraging them to buy again. You need to know if your team is losing loyal customers, and figure out a way to win them back.

Practice #4: Clear Targets and Incentives for Developing Current Customers Through Up-Selling and Cross-Sell

If your team has a goal of retaining a specific number of current customers, give them an additional goal of cross-selling and up-selling those customers. Maintaining the current contract is great, increasing the size of the current contract is better, and adding additional products or services is best. But unless you assign those targets specifically, sales people may not perform at maximum productivity.

Practice #5: Available Sales Support Resources for Labor-Intensive Low-Return Activities (Database Cleanup, Proposal Generation, Collections, Dispute Resolution, Etc.)

Sales people have many demands on their time. One hour of opportunity time can cost as much as $1,100 or more based on calculations we have conducted with our clients. Tasks like database cleanup, email marketing campaigns and past-due collections cost sales people many hours but contribute very little to their sales success. Forcing them to manage these tasks is a false economy. It is far more productive to delegate, outsource or automate these tasks as much as possible, even if it might stretch your budget to do so.

Practice #6: Require Sales People to Take Adequate Downtime

Stressed, tired or burned-out people take twice as long to do the same tasks. And they tend to use poor judgment. So contrary to conventional wisdom, if you encourage your team to work extra hours, you are inhibiting their productivity. Don't simply tell them to work smart and take vacations. Demand it.

Practice #7:  Create Performance Metrics that Cover the Sales Process from Beginning to End.

The classic way to measure sales performance is that of revenue produced or performance against quota. This is a weak indicator of effectiveness of efficiency. It comes too late in the process to correct the situation. Figure out ways to measure the sales process from the very start, and at critical milestones along the way. Define the stages of the sales process, and give your people specific targets for each stage in a given period of time. For example, consider adding number of prospects qualified, number of prospects who request a proposal, number of prospects who negotiate the terms and scope of the proposal. When sales people reach each of these key milestones the probability of a win increases. You can also figure out where the process stalls. The use of end-to-end metrics is a major contributor to productivity.

Practice #8: Useful Methods for Managing Nonproductive Sales People

Figuring out who is productive and who is not.  A sales person may be nonproductive because he is the wrong person for the job, or because he has little clarity of expectations, inadequate or insufficient coaching from his manager, or encounters operational obstacles beyond his control, which impede his performance.  The most popular methods of dealing with nonproductive sales people may not be the most productive.  These include firing the sales person, more product training and more sales skills training.  These methods are relatively high cost and produce relatively low benefits.  Some other practices tend to be lower in cost yet produce significantly better returns.  These include providing more qualified leads to sales people, clarifying and documenting their performance expectations, and improving the management, leadership and coaching skills of sales managers.

Ellen Bristol is the founder and driving force behind Bristol Strategy Group, the Miami-based sales-force productivity company, and developer of Selling the SMART Way®, BSG's flagship solution for productive sales teams. BSG's latest offering is the SMART Way Scorecard, a web-based system for managing sales force productivity. Visit us at http://www.bristolstrategygroup.com email Ellen at ellen@bristolstrategygroup.com, or phone 305-935-6676.

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EMR and EHR System Implementation Best Practices - Part 4 - Literature Review

This is the fourth article in a series dedicated to uncovering the best practices for an EMR implementation. The information presented has been developed by the author as part of a research project.

Literature Review - Introduction

Opinions vary on widely on the benefits of EMR technology and whether providers should implement them. Christman suggests that the security issues alone is reason enough to seriously assess whether an EMR is right for a particular practice (Christman, 2006). However, government entities at both the state and federal level (Edwards, Lovelock, & Rose, 2006) along with third party payer groups (Wojcik, 2006) and corporate entities (Bit by bit, 2006) are driving health care providers ultimately to electronically accessible medical records.

Currently, about 25 percent of U.S physicians are using systems that facilitate electronic health records (Murdock, 2007). As EMR systems gain momentum due to private and public pressures, the number of implementations will continue to rise and subsequently lead to the rise in failures (The Standish Group, 1995). It is the purpose of this study to help reduce failures by providing a framework in which effective best practice within the field.

Many factors may influence the successful implementation of EMR systems. An understanding of an EMR system's purpose, function and intended benefits help determine in part what influences the success or failure of an EMR project along with awareness of mistakes in the past while leveraging integration best practices that may be unique to EMR implementations.

Electronic Medical Record Systems

The collection of personal health data is described to have many formats when speaking of systems that manage it. An Electronic Medical Record is the collection of data that is central to the patient (Rishel, Handler, & Edwards, 2005). An EMR system exists to facilitate the storage, retrieval and continuity of the record itself (Gans, Kralewski, Hammons, & Dowd, 2005). EMR systems vary in functionality. According to Gans et al., EMR systems typically have the following functions listed from most common to least common:

Patient Demographics
Visit/encounter notes
Patient medications/prescriptions
Presenting complaint
Physical exam/review of symptoms
Past medical history
Problem lists
Procedure/operative notes
Laboratory results
Drug interaction warnings
Radiology/imaging results
Consult/reports from specialists
Referrals to specialists
Drug reference information
Immunization tracking
Drug formularies
Clinical guidelines and protocols
Integration with practice billing system

Other functions may include a claims processing component that allows the coding and transmitting of clinical data to insurance companies to improve the time and cost involved in dealing with insurance carriers (Research Notes, 2006).

There are other names for EMR systems such as the Electronic Health Record (EHR), Personal Health Record (PHR), Electronic Patient Record (EPR) and Computerized Patient Record (CPR). Confusion around the many terms as well as what is represented by them impacts a provider's ability to strategically assess which system is best for them (Rishel et al., 2005). Still, there are some subtle differences between each of the terms. An EMR is typically generated by a physician's practice. An EPR or EHR is typically generated using multiple sources such as those shared between a physician and a hospital. Finally, a PHR is a collection of patient information that the patient themselves hold and share with providers (Barlow, 2007).

EMR systems can be a complex set of connected systems with significant data collection points or it can be a simple system that collects basic data needed to record and associate health information with a specific patient (Rishel, 2007). An EMR system is a collection of information technology that perform the functions noted above by leveraging databases for repositories of data or aggregation points for summary data from other systems (Rishel et al., 2005).

The result of multi-faceted interaction of patient and the health care system is a distributed health record that resides in as many locations as the patient has seen physicians (Ewing, 2007). No one provider has a consistent and full picture of the patient history or treatment. One of the primary benefits of the EMR system is to help eliminate the disconnect and attempt to aggregate patient data as well as make it easier to share the data with other participating providers.

The patient's complex interaction with the healthcare system (Ewing, 2007) further reveals a problematic approach to the purpose and the ultimate goals of implementing an EMR system. This complex interaction of both human and functional provider systems leads to the case for an EMR system. Ewing suggests that the complex interactions of a patient with the medical delivery system expose the patient to significant risk of adverse treatment. Risks identified include delivery of incorrect medication, prescription interactions and lack of medical history in emergency situations. EMR systems are designed to help improve patient medical care and the provider's ability to deliver accurate medical information (Kizer, 2007).

EMR systems may ultimately feed other systems such as an aggregation point for a PHR that a patient can access and carry with them from appointment to appointment (Shetty, 2007). Reversing the scenario, an EMR system can collect and aggregate information from other sources such as laboratory, x-ray and unstructured data like faxes or handwritten notes (Wojcik, 2006). Reduction of the storage necessary to keep paper charts is also a noted as a reason to leverage and EMR freeing up of space better used for revenue generation. Paper charts have their own risks associated with them in terms of getting lost, productivity impacts to maintain and retrieve paper records and the resulting negative patient care. (Carpenter, 2002). Effective access to medical records has become is another purpose of an EMR system. The ability to access a record from remote locations is important to ensure continuity of care (Research notes, 2006).

The intended effect of EMR systems on the healthcare landscape is wide-ranged depending on the type of system and the environment in which it is being implemented. A group practice implemented an EMR system to improve the accuracy of their claims and improve efficiency and information flow (Sonnenberg,

2007). Government entities such as the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Department of Defense have larger goals of integration and delivery of a common medical record and full digitization of clinical data that can be shared with branches of the military (Melvin, 2007).

The near term presents providers with realizing the digitization of the boxes of paper that is generated by patient encounters. These paper databases represent the clinical data that is ultimately needed to take EMR systems to the next level. Clinical data is the baseline in which all healthcare processes subscribe including decision support, health outcome analysis, billing and claims processing and health maintenance.

Correlation and access to this data is what EMR systems seek to facilitate (Handler & Hieb, 2007). With Clinical data as a basis, further utilization of EMR systems can occur. EMR systems, once materially implemented across the healthcare spectrum, will itself become the framework in which more overarching goals can be accomplished, such as the centralization of a person's health history.

Gartner (Handler & Hieb, 2007) break down EMR system into generational phases of maturity (summarized):

Phase 1 systems are designed to collect encounter based information such as prevalent in a physician provider environment.

Phase 2 systems are designed to allow the updating and entry of information at the point of care. For example, a physician is making rounds at a hospital and can update his EMR records remotely rather than just access it.

Phase 3 systems are designed to support clinical episodes where there are one or more encounters that provide complete information on a patient with system recommended treatment options provided by decisions support systems. Phase 3 attempts to provide basic level evidence based medicine implementation.

Phase 4 systems are designed to further enhance the integration of systems to provide all stakeholders (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) access to patient data and to help facilitate the care process rather than just document it.

Phase 5 are complex, fully integrated systems that provide solutions across the full spectrum of care. These systems provide both visual and data driven insight and suggested courses of action where appropriate. Knowledge management is fully integrated into phase 5 systems to facilitate a more partner based approach to care.

The iterative nature of EMR system provides a baseline in which each generation can grow. However, very few EMR implementations reviewed have been shown to reach much past the first generation. Even those that are utilizing a Phase 1 EMR system are about one in four (Murdock, 2007). As adoption continues to grow, so will opportunities to further integrate with disparate systems and the development of standards for access to EMR data in a format that can be shared with both the consumer of services and the providers of care.

The next article(s) will delve into additional reference material and case studies related to EMR Implementations.

All References can be found on my website at http://www.keithfulmer.com

Keith has been in information technology planning and project management for over 16 years and is a senior healthcare operations executive. He has a passion for project management best practices and healthcare and looks forward to the coming age of the EHR.

Having two children with allergies to peanuts, Keith is passionate about allergy awareness. Come visit his latest website over at http://www.allergyalertbracelet.com/ which helps people find the best allergy alert bracelet and information they are looking for when dealing with adult or child allergy awareness.

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Your Guide to Multiple Reading Practices in Literature

It's the most fundamental concept in dealing with any study of Literature or any art form for that matter, the concept of multiple reading practices is basically a taxonomy of the different methods with which you can obtain meaning from a text. Your natural reaction to anything in life is generally a judgment, a natural human urge to make sense of your surroundings...similarly when applied to a reader's reaction to literature you can utilize different established approaches to making sense of texts.

Dominant Reading:

A Dominant Reading usually provides a reading of the text reflecting a broad consensus on what a text may mean, such a reading usually places a great deal of emphasis on how the reader believes the author has positioned them to respond. The reader usually reads the text in an 'author friendly' manner, although I've always been mystified as to how the reader determines what the intended meaning of a text was, on the part of an author, nevertheless this concept of a dominant reading persists as a type of reading which supposedly involves the reader traveling along the trajectory the author has designed to produce the meaning that the author intended. It is my personal opinion, that it is simply the 'mainstream' interpretation of a text which gains the de facto legitimacy of 'author approved' by sheer weight of numbers.

Alternative Reading

An Alternative Reading produces as the name might suggest, a meaning that is different from a dominant reading but nevertheless recognizes the purpose of the author in a text and does not 'go against the grain' of the text. The distinction between an Alternative Reading and a Resistant Reading, would probably be that an Alternative Reading is still heavily reliant on the text while a Resistant Reading implicitly requires to a greater extent ideological or contextual baggage which the reader uses to challenge the premise of a text.

Resistant Reading

A Resistant Reading 'goes against the grain of the text' and usually involves the reader being less reliant on the text and usually involves a much greater contextual influence; in terms of ideology, race, class or gender.

Feminist Reading

A Feminist reading foregrounds the representations of women: by that I mean the way key female characters are characterised and the values they hold, and the way the reader is positioned to respond to them.

Judith Fetterly author of 'The Resisting Reader' a seminal work in the area of Feminist and other recent developments in alternative readings, summarized the purpose of a feminist reading as "Feminist criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read."

The underlying assumption of any Feminist Reading is an awareness or 'consciousness' on the part of the reader of a patriarchal hegemony reinforcing an oppressive set of roles and expectations for women, and literature as part of a dominant discourse for much of human history which has supported this oppression. Thus the reader usually identifies, in a feminist reading, whether the text is part of this cultural construct of oppressive gender roles or is seeking to subvert this patriarchal discourse.

The Danger in Feminist Readings

The danger in constructing a feminist reading is not accounting for the political distinctions and movement of feminism as an ideology. First off, feminism is hardly an ideology, you can't construct a 'feminist' reading because no one knows what 'feminism' really means. This is because of the distinct political backgrounds and social agenda that 'First Wave Feminism', 'Second Wave Feminism' and 'Third Wave Feminism' entail.

Secondly feminist readings can not and should not be confined to superficial readings of a character's values or rather how a character's values is constructed by a text, and whether this constitutes 'a liberal' or 'parochial' attitude towards the role of women.

Feminist criticism is closely associated with Freudian psycho analysis, this can be seen in the feminist study of Frankenstein by Anne K Mellor which focused on the psycho-sexual developments in the text, the phallocentric discourse and motifs. This study found great and complex meaning in the positioning of images in the text and their sexual connotations, clearly feminist readings must account for more than characterization and plot. In fact a feminist reading, must, analyse the subconscious of the text in the way images are constructed, positioned and the order in which they occur; thereby providing a more definitive and profound implication for the politics of feminism.

It is politics that feminist theory centres around, not party politics, but the broader study of the exercise of power. This means a text can not be isolated from its political period, and the reading itself must find a political implication about the system that enforces a particular gender relationship.

Post-Colonial Reading

This reading practice focuses on representations of race particularly the relationship between colonisers and the colonised, Post-Colonial literature is a broad body of work often with the shared theme of 'writing from the margins' or providing a voice for the voiceless. Often Post Colonial readings will focus on impact of colonisation and colonial or imperial ideologies that underpin colonisation. Post Colonial readings may identify in texts constructs of 'the other', perhaps symbolised by a marginalised character or setting.

Post Colonial readings are linked very strongly with Marxist theory, best seen in the recurring use in post colonial discourse of the term 'subaltern' pioneered by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. The term was adopted by the pioneer of the 'subaltern studies group' Ranajit Guha, a prominent Post Colonial scholar of Indian origin. This term encapsulates the current concerns of Post Colonial scholars, Ranajit Guha and his school have examined the way Post Colonial power structures such as the Indian State after the British granted independence in 1947, still relies on the same ideas and political space, as the British Raj. This has led to the central concern of Post Colonial scholars with history, as the story of the victors, and their political intent to amend history this time accounting for the voices of the oppressed and marginalised. So Post Colonial readings share a Marxist concern with oppression and the voice of the marginalised.

However Post Colonial readings are more concerned with language as a means of reinforcing and perpetrating the colonial ideology and intent. Rushdie suggests the Post Colonial author seeks to 'conquer' the language that oppressed their people.

Problems facing a post colonial reading is best explored in Gayatri Spivak Charkravorty's landmark essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak' where she explores the role of the Post Colonial reader and his or her authority to articulate the voice of the subaltern. She concludes, the subaltern can not be translated by anyone other than the subaltern, therefore post colonial readings are limited in unearthing real representations of the 'subaltern' or other.

Marxist Reading

Marxist Readings emphasize this connection between 'Base' and 'Superstructure; Base refers to the economic system of a society which Marx suggested was best reflected in the relations between employers and labour and superstructure which refers to social institutions and literature in particular. Thus Marxist theory identifies Literature as part of this societal superstructure; suggesting literature is influenced by, and in turn influences the economic 'base' of a society. This is the crux of a Marxist Reading identifying the influence of economic and political system on a text and vice versa.

This is achieved through focusing in on representations of the working class or proletariat, and representations of the bourgeoisie or middle class/employers and the interaction between them in a text. Another important aspect is class consciousness, to what degree does a text promote awareness of class? To what extent does identity depend on class? And to what degree does the text suggest justice or injustice within a particular economic system? Does the text promote change to these relationships and constructs (revolution)? i.e revolution consciousness

Psycho-Analytic Reading

A highly complex reading strategy, which I confess, I have only a very elementary understanding of...The bare mention of Freud and Lacan is enough to confuse me... I suppose Freud's reading of the Greek myth Oedipus is probably a demonstration of the cross purposes of Psycho-Analytic Readings and Psycho-analysis, where Freud's reading of Oedipus influences his Oedipal theory on the development of the child etc...Thus to psychoanalysts their reading practice was not only a means of literary interpretation but a means of postulating their theories

Psycho-Analytic Readings focus on symbolism in particular within a text and usually analyses the author or a particular character to some depth. The basic fundamentals of this reading practice is this idea of the text as a dream, and the purpose of this reading practice to elicit the real meaning from this dream by following an analytical process placing importance on symbols, language and characterization.

Personal Reading

Probably the most entertaining approach is to have a crack at your own interpretation of a text perhaps synthesizing some of the approaches above, but this method usually places the greatest emphasis on personal context, on the way the reader relates to a text and is influenced by his or her own context in the way he or she responds.

Contextual/New Historicist Reading

The emphasis is on placing a text in its historical context and its place in a broader literary movement, as well as the author's own context; this approach reinforces the influence a society has on an author, and the importance of understanding the context of reception of a text, as a tool to making meaning. This reading practice focuses on the biases of the author, suggesting the importance of understanding an author's psychology and influences. Another important aspect is recognising the critic's bias, and stating the readers' own context and how it influences their reading.

This practice is concerned not only with the text but more with the surroundings both of the authorship and reception of the text.

New Criticism

If you have a 'close reading' section in your English literature examination, or a section where you have to critically analyse an unseen text...You have the new critics to blame!

Reacting against the practices of New Historicism which emphasized the text's linguistic, historical, political and social context and place instead of the actual text itself. In academic circles of the time it was considered the role of commercial critics to do textual analysis, and the role of the academics was to place the text within the literary canon in terms of politics. New Criticism rejected this emphasis with things outside the text.

New Criticism was profound in terms of reinvigorating the way we look at a text. In 1954 Beardsley and Wimsatt's essay 'The Intentional Fallacy' suggested that it was wrong for readers to understand a text in terms of an authors political or social context or purported intent. Intentional fallacy saw the end of readings that tried to 'fit' texts into what we knew about the author for example often readings of George Bernard Shaw's works succumb to poor analysis of an individual text and instead go for the easier 'socialist' reading clasping firmly Shaw's affiliation with the Fabian society. To a new critic, this was unacceptable, a text should be analysed on its own, it had 'autonomy of meaning'.

Other new concepts they pioneered included, heresy of paraphrase, the idea you could not arbitrarily 'quote' from a text, as the quote only has a meaning as an organic part of the whole text, it has no significance outside that frame. Another of their concepts was 'affective fallacy', in other words confusing what a text makes you 'feel' with what it means. They were concerned with paradox, irony and complexity in a text that could be reconciled into one superior, coherent reading. They believed in light of this poetry was the most beautiful and worthy form of literature.

By Shounok Chatterjee

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