Build a Sales System, Not Sales Channels

Link together all of the people who will affect or who will be affected by the sale of your products and services into a complex, adaptive human network. That network will lead directly to retaining more of your current customers and winning new customers in many ways. Here are just a few of them:

Customers who feel networked with your company will want to buy more of your products.
Your sales people will know your customers better, and they will learn more from those customers.
Your sales people will know your internal people better, so they can more readily convey their learnings from your customers into your business.

Sales Systems are Complex, Adaptive Networks of People

DeltaNet Consultants helps client businesses understand the systems that are already in place linking together people in their businesses, in their sales networks, and in their customer communities. Using methods initiated by W.Edwards Deming, we help clients:

Develop a Sales System For Your Entire Business

A system, or network of people, representing all the stakeholders is not normal in a hierarchical organization. Professional outside intervention coupled with focused internal efforts are needed to develop such a system and to make it work.

That's where we come in. We have developed a program to do just that. In fact the system we help our clients develop has 7 smaller systems nested inside of it. (See diagram below)

We train and coach clients to replace the belief that the sales department owns the customers with the realization that the business owns the customers. The business is far more complex than the sales department, so we help clients develop and operate systems that link all the stakeholders to work together constructively.

Follow this link to download a presentation on this topic. Seeing Businesses as Systems Here is a brief introduction to the 7 systems in our System of Selling.

The Supply Chain Networks

Supplier Network: A complex network within the business, crossing functional boundaries and linking everyone who will affect or be affected by the sustainable success of the business.
Rep Network: A less complex network including everyone involved in trading the Supplier's products and services for the Customers' money.
Customer Network: A highly complex network including everyone in the customer communities who will affect or will be affected by decisions to purchase products and services similar to those produced by the Supplier's business.

The Interconnect Networks

Sales Administration Network: This network connects members of the Supplier Network with members of the Rep Network. Something similar to this network is typically in place, but operating more like a command and control hierarchy than as an interdependent network of people with an enabling, overarching purpose. We help clients to create and deploy Task Forces assigned to specific administrative projects to continually improve the operation of the Sales Administration Network.
Sales Network: This is complex of local networks in which sales people and customers form small communities, usually geographically defined. This network is normally in place in some form, but not well recognized or understood by the people in the Supplier's business. The local Reps and the Customers live and work in kind of local Community. Interpersonal relationships create success for all parties, just like in residential communities.
Business Development Network: This network connects the myriad of people in the Supplier Network with the myriad of people in the Customer Network. It is normally the missing link. Even Suppliers who do a lot of customer research place too much emphasis on the data, and not enough on linking the Supplier and Customer Networks interactively and constructively. Only real cross-functional teams, detached from the hierarchies, and with members representing all the stakeholder groups in the Supplier Network and in the Customer network can consistently deliver the innovations required for robust business development. Helping clients create and develop those cross-functional teams is one of our core strengths.

Overall Coordination Network

This is a relatively small network linking members of all three of the Supply Chain Networks; Suppliers, Reps, and Customers. It's purpose is to coordinate the operation and continuing development of the other six networks for best overall performance.

Our Role

This network of seven networks often seems too complex for hierarchically trained minds to comprehend, let alone attempt to set up and operate. But it's what we do for a living. We help clients get disparate people to work together interdependently. It's the core value in our team-building programs.

We help clients design these networks, select the people to get them started, train and coach the various teams, workgroups and management to develop and operate these networks. People learn to do their own situation assessments, set their own goals, develop their own plans to achieve those goals, and execute those plans with a passion not possible in strictly hierarchical organizations.

Our role is to provide training and coaching services to help your business to create customers by enabling and empowering these 7 networks better than your best competitors do. Customers will want to buy your products and services from your business, rather than the products of your competitors. Our role is to help your business replace the dysfunctional concepts of "selling" with the far more productive concepts of "buying".

More Information

For more information, please email: Hal Stitt , or call +1 541-344-9704