There comes a time in small businesses that to continue growing, it is necessary to change the way of working, incorporate new practices, adjust internal processes, tools and develop new skills that probably do not exist in the sales team. It is necessary to face a Commercial Transformation process.
Business Transformation is not simply hiring new software or hiring a new Sales or Marketing director.
It requires the ability to continually improve the business skills of the entire team to sustain above-market growth over the long term.
Constantly beating the market requires a high-performance commercial team that begins to operate in a more agile and efficient way, and above all, it requires the very serious commitment of the company's management.
Having worked on many projects of commercial organizations of all types of companies over the years, we have been strengthening the TMC Consultores methodology, developing a proven comprehensive scheme to successfully implement a Commercial Transformation in your company in 5 stages:
Where are we and why change?
Transformation Plan
Organization Design
Organization Activation
Continuous improvement
Where are we and why change?
The company's first step is to understand where we are about the best in our industry (best-in-class): route to market models, organizational structures, competency profiles, management and operational practices, innovations, and technology; all this contrasted with customer satisfaction studies.
This will allow us to prioritize opportunities to focus initial efforts where greater and faster returns on investment (quick wins) are achieved. This will always be essential in a business transformation project.
Patience is not a common characteristic in CEOs
Within this initial phase, a robust work team must be formed, made up of key influencers from each function and ensuring the commitment and participation of the company's leadership team (CEO, CMO, COO. Without this we are going straight to failure).
Some companies have begun to form Commercial Transformation Directorates, which, although they can lead and shape projects, should never leave out the functional leaders of what will ultimately be the areas to be transformed.
At the end of this phase, it is necessary to define a common vision of the problem to be solved and why a change would bring significant potential benefits. These benefits will ultimately become the communication and motivation elements of the project.
Transformation Plan
Any significant Business Transformation begins as a corporate strategic objective and continues with a detailed plan with a clear statement of intent with a realistic vision, specific and measurable objectives, resources, people responsible (again, make sure to include the top team), and timelines.
Transformations will not be successful unless they achieve substantive victories within 6 to 12 months. These victories will build trust and can help fund long-term change.
Additionally, the plan will consider actions to correct, maintain motivation and reward those collaborators who advance in the required direction.
Organization Design
To achieve transformation, we must design a World Quality Business Organization with agility and high leadership and change management skills. Among the key tasks of this phase are:
Design of the appropriate Structure for each function. Short, medium and long term.
Position Profiles and Critical Competencies by function and position, incorporating a High Performance culture.
Analysis of functional and/or individual gaps in capabilities and skills.
Process Optimization, incorporating best practices, to redirect the organization, reinforcing behaviors and new habits.
Creation of Integration Mechanisms for Planning, Coordination and Multifunctional Commercial Communication.
Perhaps one of the main differences of the companies considered as Top Performers vs. the rest is that the former take the organization very seriously and do not allow each new manager or director to make adjustments to the best of their knowledge or opinion (usually little knowledge of the subject). These practices usually end up creating a kind of patchwork quilt or Frankenstein organizations, very ineffective and with little capacity for growth.
A solid organization is based on a clear vision of where it is intended to go, the adequate and gradual incorporation of best practices, processes associated with positions and structures, position profiles in line with what is expected of them, activation and training plans. to close gaps, among others.
Organization Activation
Enabling Sales Teams with the new critical competencies, practices and desired behaviors requires extensive planning and again a lot of commitment from the leadership team and key influencers from each discipline. This is where many Business Transformation Processes fall down.
The activation of the organization implies a change of mentality and the development of new leadership and change management skills.
For managers, the focus should be on coaching, analysis, planning, and problem solving. Sales and account teams, for example, need specific skills in detecting customer needs, formulating value propositions, consultative selling and negotiation, among others.
It will most likely take multiple waves of activity to meet your transformation goals in each business discipline. In fact, most successful transformations in terms of positive business results (sales, profits, etc.) take years to implement, not months. However, these transformations work like virtuous circles, where each improvement in results and each advance in capabilities creates a cycle of continuous improvement.
Continuous Improvement
Building a high-performance culture requires the implementation of specific processes and tools to redirect the organization, reinforce behavior and create new habits. But the really critical component, and one that almost no company can do on their own without the help of a good consulting team, is putting in place the right metrics to track and tune performance. Without them, it's virtually impossible to understand what works and what doesn't.
Additionally, continuous improvement requires an important component or philosophy of modeling and coaching. All the successful models we know of put a lot of effort into disciplining managers in this practice. It's about a real commitment to improve your people by providing constructive feedback, empathizing, helping them solve their problems and reinforcing their strengths. It is also about modeling new behaviors, something that rarely happens in practice.
A continuous communication strategy of the results obtained and future improvement actions will keep the team motivated and committed to the change. The successful Business Transformation must also be accompanied by the best Organizational Climate.
A challenge that can be very rewarding! A deep and lasting Commercial Transformation can be a great challenge that will require a lot of leadership and courage from the company's management, but it could be the only way not only to generate future business growth but also to barely survive in some cases.
On the other hand, the leaders who have taken on the challenge with energy, enthusiasm, and total certainty of the expected results have achieved their vision in a very gratifying way.
At TMC we have accompanied the Commercial Transformation process of a large number of companies in Latin America. We have a portfolio of cases that we too are very proud of.
Need help? Just contact us.
Written by Juan Manuel Domínguez R. CEO of TMC Commercial Consultants. If you are interested in learning about TMC's consulting or training products in this area, write to us at contacto@tmcconsultores.com and we will immediately contact you.
If we are not yet connected on LinkedIn, it will be a pleasure to have you in my network of contacts https://es.linkedin.com/in/juanmanueldominguezr
If you want to discuss some ideas on how to implement it in your company, contact us at contacto@tmcconsultores.com and we will respond immediately.
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