Jan 11 07
Communication System: the sales module
By Renn Vara
Historically, large enterprises have done a good job focusing on organizational issues like back-office business processes, database management, staffing structures and product rollouts, among other things. Nothing’s perfect, but at least the enterprise recognizes the importance of finding efficiencies in different areas of their business. These efforts are often driven by the demands of financial accountability, and by the office of the CFO.
Well, it’s time for the enterprise to focus on the communication side of these efforts. Until recently, this was considered the “soft side,” and a less important part of the work, primarily because it didn’t hit the bottom line as hard as an IT implementation. Or at least that’s what we’ve always assumed.
The current process begins with management creating the strategy, process and/or initiative, and then assuming it gets to employees, the sales force, partners, and even customers through internal communication structures. The problem is that with the proliferation of web-delivery (like WebEvents, audio, video and even elearning), departments throughout the business enterprise can now easily produce and send out communications. Ease-of-use and low cost means communications initiatives constantly fly at your audience. The result is an over-communication to the organization, often misusing the available vehicles. And the cost taken as a whole to the enterprise is significant:
- 4+ hours per day per employee going through emails and internal communications
- Hundreds of conference calls, webevents, videos, audio programs, elearning systems, etc. often duplicating efforts
- Competing divisions putting their own spin on the information
- And in the end ongoing miscommunication despite all the efforts
And what’s worse, the enterprise is convinced they’ve done their job and communicated the message — they never learn that the opposite actually happened. The message was miscommunicated, or totally ignored, because of information overload.
Now the problem is compounded. They think they communicated when in fact they didn’t. So what’s the solution? We believe the enterprise needs to institute what SNP calls the Communication System. This parallels the current efforts to adopt the Business System of key business indicators, analytics, and other financial and operational data. The Communication System, like the Business System, includes certain common modules but is customized to the culture and specific needs of a given enterprise. Let’s take a high level look at the SNP Field Module within the Communication System. We call it Taking It To The Streets: Portal to Profit. It includes:
- Sales portal – has all the information, tools, and RSS backbone structure for communicating to the field, push and pull
- Weekly consolidated email with all departmental communications to reduce the amount of email going to the field
- Weekly audio 2 minute “headliners” from the sales leader with “news you can use”
- Monthly talk radio interview program to tell the bigger story and expand culture
- Quarterly webevents to engage and learn as a team
- In class training programs to solve critical field problems like taking the field from products to solution selling
- Ongoing online component training – usually an internal elearning structure
- Core pitch / content development and coaching for annual sales and customer meetings
- Communicating and leveraging internal club campaigns as well
Underlying all of this is SNP’s NewsRoom for capturing big wins and distributing them in dialogue format (audio and/or video) as they happen. The result is a comprehensive “system” that funnels the right information at the right time to the right audience to focus the team in the right direction on the right goal/objective, in this case the field organization.
The benefits are lower costs and higher success in making your team more effective. This Field Module rolls up into a larger enterprise “communication system.” Pay attention, you’re about to hear directives from the office of the CFO saying, “Get those communication costs under control.” And you’ll be ready.
