Six Sigma Sales Projects

Six Sigma works very well in sales – providing you first know what you are trying to achieve.
Firstly, sales people believe that what they do is a ‘black art’ without form or structure, and it is helpful to first process map the sales process, and get the sales department fully involved!
Secondly, the success of Six Sigma is to improve customer experienced quality, which could very well be the speed of the sales process. Speed is always a good project to tackle, whereas closure rate will be more difficult – what constitutes a failure is more difficult to define!
However, what do your customers of the sales process say? If they say “you have a great sales team, shame about the product” then sales is not where you need to be working! If they say “great product, we want to buy, but you take so long to close the sale” then speed of sales is where to start. If they say “wonderful product, great sales team, but hey, why don’t you sell more and make more profit by closing more sales?” then go for sales-closure – but you sure have some strange customers!
A very good metric to improve on is the sales-customer contact time. How long are your sales people actively talking to customers each day – 1 hour, 2 hours 4 hours? Measure this and you might be very surprised, ten percent contact time is not unknown. Increase this to 25 percent contact time and sales could more than double. Wow!

As a former GE Six Sigma BB, I focused on sales. What worked exceptionally well in measuring performance and success was to conduct a sales quality audit. It helped focus us on the largest areas of improvement in order to roll out impactful projects. I was able to have details on days and hours spent traveling, face to face time, adminstrative time, follow-up time, and time spent fighting fires. When you work in tandem with the leader in sales to position the audit as as way to help sales have time to do what they do best, the process works smoothly. If anyone wants specifics, I’ll be happy to share.[iSixSigma Community Note: See https://www.isixsigma.com/forum/showmessage.asp?messageID=23085 for a link to the document Sandy shared.]

Sandy, sorry I called you Susan. Must have had a brain lapse between screens.

Sandy, Would you please forward the sales info to me also. I am a sales mgr of a home building company and believe your info to be useful. Thanks

I’m beginning to work a project around sales productivity for my company and the sales audit worksheet that Sandy mentioned sounds like a great tool.  Does anyone have a copy that they could forward???

Sandy, I would be interested in a copy of your sales audit if its still available. I am interested in using six sigma in sales and this would be a good start.Would you be available to chat? Thanks.Bob

Hello Sandy,
 
I will be very keen to receive details of your work.
 
Regards,
 
Niraj

Sandy: I’ve begun to look at Six Sigma and sales process and ran across your message. I would like to receive any documentation that is not propriatary. Thanks for your help.

Do you have any charts worksheets that can be used for the process you used?
 
Thanks

I am fairly new to Six Sigma.  My position is in the sales area.  I’d love to get a copy of this tool too.  I’m hoping the thread isn’t too old!

Kathy: 
As a former MBB with GE , I spent considerable time with the Sales and Marketing areas.  I also trained the Sales force in an accelerated Sales Green Belt training program.  I would  be happy to discuss this with you.  You can contact me at 215-518-0115.
 
Sandy

I would greatly appreciate a copy of that sales audit form as well.  It would be an excellent example for me to use as a templete for my organization.  Please email to [email protected]
Warm regards,
James Haske

I would greatly appreciate any documentation on Six Sigma and the sales process. Please send to [email protected]
This assistance may be the edge I need to launch  Six Sigma in our sales office. 

Hi Sandy, I’m a new BB and my first project involves increasing sales volume.  Could you please send any helpful info, such as the sales audit?  Any assistance you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Steve
 

Hi Sandy,
I hope this thread isn’t too old and you are still out there.  If so, please send me a copy of the sales auditing worksheet.
Thx
Chris ([email protected])

Sandy, would really appreciate a copy of the sales audit worksheet and other materials/advice that you think would be helpful in improving the sales function at software/services company. Thanks very much, Joe
Joseph Winograd (http://mailto:[email protected])Phone: 708-747-0768  Fax: 708-401-0073

Sandy, I am a 2 year BB but new to market & sell. I’d like to learn as much as possible about projects for the sales organization. Will you please forward your audit form to
[email protected]
Thank you. Thomas
 

Sandy
Another request I’m afraid for more details of your sales audit methodology – I am interested in applying this to car sales, where our salespeople spend a huge amount of time doing things other than interfacing with customers!  I’m at [email protected]
regards
David

Hello Sandy,
Any information you can share regarding your 6S sales analysis would be greatly appreciated.  From what you’ve disclosed, I ‘m confident it will assist by peeling back the layers of a sale and defining the inefficient sectors of the process.     Many thanks, Roy :)
[email protected]

I would be interested in receiving your audit form.

Sandy,
Please send me a copy of your project data. Also, did you do a rolled throughput yield calculation on the conversion of leads to signed contracts as the opportunity went throught the steps of the sales process?
Regards,
Bill

The sales process is a very important step for any company, is the last part of the whole process to hitch the business, so I am a green belt and I have looking how to improve our sales process, I have special interest in learning more about this. Here is my e-mail for any information that can send me, I will appreciate it. 
Luis Taboada  [email protected]

My email address might be helpful ~ sorry!  I would like a copy of the audit and anything else that might be available.
Thanks again!
[email protected]

Hi Sandy,
I took some time to read through the thread. I am a BB in the Philippines struggling on my Sales Process project. Can you share the materials you mentioned earlier. You can send them to [email protected].
Thanks.

Sandy,
I’m interested in any info/audit process on the application of SS to Sales and Marketing process.
Regards, Keith
[email protected]
 
 

I would really appreciate a copy of the sales audit worksheet.  If anyone has a copy, could you please forward it to me at the email below.  Thanks!
[email protected]

I’m interested to learn more about your project. I was discouraged to take on a sales project but you drove some good points there that will enhance our understanding of how to approach the “market share in some of our imported units being sold in the Philippines.” We’ve broken down this mega project to each model to understand the factors affecting each – we’ll look at advertising, pricing, competition, etc. and then focus on the factor that we can influence within the a period of 3-4 months.I’ll appreciate your input. What was your metric?

Sandy,
I’d be very interested in your sales audit worksheet as well – we’re just starting to expand outside of manufacturing projects, and some of our sales/marketing folks have expressed interest at moving faster.
Paul
[[email protected]]

Could you please send me the file?  Thanks!

Greg:
I am sending you the sales audit worksheet .  I hope that it helps you.  I want to make sure that I let you knwo about the intense process that needed to be planned prior to having the audit sheet completed by a sampling of the sales population.  Drop me a line at [email protected]  if you need further assistance.
 
Sandy

Hi Sandy,
I don’t post my email to newsgroups because automated spiders harvest emails and send spam mail. Can you post the audit worksheet to this site so I can download it? That would be fantastic and thanks for helping!
Tom

Hi Sandy
Could I share your specifics?
Best Regards
Hedong Wang

Sandy,
I’d be very interested in your sales audit worksheet as well – we’re just starting to get into sales 6 sigma and I am a new BB for Europe Distribution. Can you please send a copy of your worksheet at following mail address:

[email protected]
Thanks in advance!!
Luca

Sandy, Can you please also forward me a copy? Thank you!
[email protected]

Hi,
I have go thru the entire thread of this discussion and I may be nth person for requesting u to send copy of sales adutit sheet and any other info on application of six sigma in sales at [email protected]
sanjay mehta

Sandy:  If you still have the study available, I would appreciate you sharing it with me.  I build sales teams and develop new approaches for new service offerings.  I could use some help in measuring effectiveness.

Jonh, I am sorry if I am repeating what others may have asked… I did not have enough time to read all the replies.
Sometimes is to out of control the customer satisfaction. What is key in a good sales six sigma project is the pre-work need. In all environments (sales or any other department) the measure phase has to emphasize the Critical to Customer Requirements, which can be cycle-time, specs an so on. During the DEFINE/ MEASURE phases the Black Belts will have the opportunity to balance between business goals/ critical to customers requirements. What for? In order to establish what really is a defect in your relationship with the customers.

Sandy, can you e-mail me the audit worksheet you’ve described? We’re just getting into six sigma training and want to develop some sales projects. E-mail address is [email protected]  Thanks

Hello Sandy,
I’m interested to expand Six Sigma to Sales Department, could you share with me the Audit Form.
thanks

Sandy, I would appreciate a copy of this audit worksheet as well!  Please forward at your convenience.

Seems like the entire six sigma communiyt in the world has seen this audit sheet.
I am just starting a sales project, but with a project team that does not believe in six sigma or its application to a sales process. Any help that anyone could offer will be great!
Thanks and best regards
Anil
[email protected]

I agree with what you are saying, but how do you construct a direct correlation between the extra time spent selling and the increased sales? 

The only correlation we found was number of units sold per hour based on the time spent doing pure selling only, no administrative work.

Hi Sandy
I’m the latest in line to ask for a copy of your worksheet to my e-mail [email protected]
I’ve read quite a few of the responses but did not see any that added any suggestions as to how to measure Sales Projects and prove cause and effect – I’m sure I’m having a common problem that in a climate of fluctuating markets / sales performance it is difficult to ‘prove’ with 70 or 90% confidence levels (p-values <0.3 or <0.1) that :
a.  Your project alone will have or has had a stastistically significant (hopefully positive!) impact on sales growth / brought in incremental sales.
b.  Improving sales person efficiency – reducing ‘wasted’ time spent and thus  freeing them up more to focus on the key customer facing tasks actually delivers incremental sales.  It sounds like I’ve taken the same approach as you in measuring reductions in ‘wasted’ time but I can’t seem to find a way to turn this into a financially quantified sales increase.
c.  Increasing a measured current customer satisfaction e.g. from 80% satisfied to 90% actually delivers incremental sales.
Have you ever seen any ‘industry standard’ accepted measures of the above, e.g. I have heard that some companies accept that an increase of quality of X delivers $X% incremental sales – have you ever seen anythign similar proved on increases in customer satisfaction / time spent with customer?
 
Thanks and Regards.
Dawn Kershaw

Trying to improve our sales as well and am using Six Sigma to, hopefully, conquer our issues.  Can you forward me the spreadsheet, please?  Thanks.

Hi Sandy – Very keen in knowing more as I am likely to be a Black Belt driving projects in this area. rgds SM

I would love to get a copy of your sales audit sheet. Thanks Dev

Dev, all – I have a good amount of experience in both sales and TQM.  In particular, I have found process mapping in especially complex sales environments to be helpful from the standpoint of process improvement, problem-solving, information sharing, and training.  If desired, I can provide further perspective.

Are you still offering the worksheet?  I would love it if you could send a copy to me.
Thank you very much – Doug