SalesWays Editor Leo Law recently caught up with Keith Thompson for this short interview:

Q: Why is Sales Automation Done Right relevant in today’s business world?
It’s relevant because the whole concept of selling is now under the microscope. Many years of fierce competition in markets has led industry analysts and thought leaders to question the value of the salesperson in the customer transaction. I think Neil Rackham started off this thinking process with his research leading to the successful SPIN book and the resultant sales method.

Rackham’s ideas have been reinforced and extended upon in the recent book Selling is Dead by Miller and Sinlowitz. These authors focus on “tactical selling,” which sales automation doesn’t really address. But their concerns go beyond pure tactics. They write that consistent and reproducible sales processes across the entire sales team are vitally important. I say that the way to achieve this goal is to derive sales processes appropriate for the computer and to make them an inseparable part of the CRM/SFA computer application that almost every salesperson has to use every day as an essential part of their responsibilities.

Q: Why is it more important than ever for salespeople to maintain organic growth rather than to just aggressively push their product?
Denis Pombriant, in his comment on sales automation done right, hints that the whole process of selling is going through some form of intrinsic change. The vision of a solid, thoughtful, planned sales effort focused on a sincere belief of a prolonged relationship with the customer is what’s needed today.

This is the essence of a strategy dedicated to organic growth. There is no patience for an aggressive, one-time, go-for-broke, individualistic, sales attitude. Organic growth implies longevity, rather than short bursts of effort divorced from considerations of sustainability. The meltdown in the dot-com era showed what happens if this type of phenomenon persists.

Q: Very briefly, how do you do Sales Automation right?
It’s tough to describe that briefly, and that’s why I wrote the book. There are just so many angles to it. The whole issue of how sales fits into the CRM initiative has a lot of people confused. The first thing to do is to understand the differences between CRM and SFA—that’s why I’ve devoted a lot of space to that in Part 1 of the book. Once that confusion has been cleared up, it will be clear on how much attention is needed specifically for a reliable, reproducible sales process founded on a platform of automation.

The elements that constitute such a process are described in detail in sales automation done right. I’ve often called these elements the fundamentals of selling, but a sales trainer friend of mine cautioned me on that. Very few sales teams think about and understand what constitutes a sale in the analytical way that the book uses. As such, it is probably wrong to call these ideas fundamental. They are much needed new ways of dissecting the meaning of the sales opportunity such that a true statement of value can be attached to it. This allows the salesperson to more effectively allocate their true selling resources.

Q: Why is it important to bring technology and techniques together?
That is what I would call—in one of those cliché, but very expressive terms—a no-brainer. In sales automation done right I equate techniques with technology. Why was it important to bring finance and technology together, or manufacturing and technology together, or communications and technology together?

Technology has been one of the core paradigm shifts that has and continues to revolutionize the way we live, and without doubt, the way we do business. I think that we have been late getting applying technology to the sales process—and when this begins to happen, the benefits will be enormous.

Q: What are the Four Waves of Sales Automation and why is it important to get to Wave Four?
A few years ago, my team and I did a study in which we called over a thousand companies that fitted the description of Small to Mid Market. We wanted to find out where they were at in developing a CRM or SFA infrastructure within their organization. We found that if improvements in technology were introduced as a reaction to concerns about weaknesses in the customer facing processes or gaps in vital strategic customer information, the final solution to the problem would only occur through an naturally evolving four stage process.

The initial stage was the organization supported by information storage and business processes based on paper. The final stage was the most desirable; a fully connected, computer networked, collaborative team environment with a shared, freely accessible, database of up-to-date, accurate customer information, and that’s Wave Four. The two stages in between represent inadequate responses to move from one to four, and unfortunately, the majority of organizations large and small reside in either of these two intermediate situations with inadequate technological support for superior customer relations and sales performance expectations.

I think it’s definitely a good exercise, if you are implementing CRM or SFA, to spend time evaluating the current situation and to come up with an honest appraisal in which stage your current organization is in. This will help form a clearer picture of the work that needs to be done to move to Wave Four.

Q: Multinational corporations are already automating their sales force, and they are really leading the way. How big do you have to be to go through with this?
It’s important to understand that the principles of sales process and methodology apply universally to organizations of every size and description. That includes the solo salesperson, discussed in Part 5 of the book. What changes as the corporation gets larger is the challenge of connecting thousands of salespeople across a large dispersed organization, which is more of a delivery and bandwidth issue.

Q: Final thoughts?
That’s easy. Everything in sales automation done right is a result of my personal experience in growing a company over a fifteen year period. These ideas were formed and tested. They worked, they continue to work—and I want to share them so others can benefit. So many of the businesses we talk to are trying to reinvent the wheel on these core processes of sales and customer management. I hope to save them that effort.

Organizations are constantly searching for ways to improve the fundamentals of their business and you would think that if they had a guaranteed way to sell more and cut costs, they would all rush to it. But for whatever reason, the sales department always gets passed by in the rush to improve systems, processes and training—other parts of the operation get there first. But at some point, management says, “We’re getting the most out of putting resources into building product with least cost, perhaps we should look at moving more product,” and the focus turns to the customer, and hopefully the sales effort. That’s where sales automation done right comes in.