All-for-one and one-for-all

More often than not, this system creates channel conflicts among the different sales groups servicing the same customers from different touch-points - field sales, telesales and resellers. Instead of doing what is best for the organization and the customer, each group tries to protect its turf - and economic base - by hoarding rather than sharing leads, maintaining proprietary customer files and routing as much business as possible through its own channel.

While competition can be a strong personal spur, this traditional model may not be the most efficient way to sell, especially in highly competitive industries with complex products. The technology industry, for one, sparks fierce competition where mixed channel models help cover all bases with the customer. The smartest companies have realized that complex, multi-channel sales organizations require a high degree of coordination, cooperation and teamwork to be truly successful.

A prudent sales organization will motivate its sales representatives to exercise judgment when evaluating an opportunity and choose the most cost-effective sales channel, regardless of whose jurisdiction it falls under. Improved sales resource utilization - putting the right amount of resources behind an opportunity - results in higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, and lower sales costs.

A field sales representative typically costs more than a telesales representative. Yet companies shouldn't replace all their field sales representatives with telesales representatives, as organizations still need field salespeople out meeting with customers, providing them with high-touch, personalized care and attention.

But how does a company make it everyone's best interest to work as a team? At Oracle, we found the answer was to 'hard-wire' the teamwork ethos into the entire sales cycle. This feat was accomplished by changing the technology, culture, and business processes. Let's examine each of these changes separately.

Our first challenge was technology integration. To function as a whole, the sales organization needs a collaborative IT infrastructure. The entire sales force needs to aggregate manage and share data across departmental functions (i.e., marketing, telemarketing, telesales, and field sales), business workflows (e.g., tracking marketing spend through sales revenue generation) and customer interactions (i.e., Web store, telephone, and in-person).

At Oracle, we migrated our entire business worldwide to the Internet and consolidated our global data in 1999. The next step was to re-engineer our business processes to support uniform global business practices and shared services.

For our worldwide sales organization, that entailed adopting a comprehensive e-business solution to integrate front and back office functions such as online marketing, a web store, telesales, incentive compensation, and order management. With this unified Oracle E-Business Suite, all of our sales groups worldwide now use the same forms, analytical tools, reporting procedures and forecasting methodologies.

The next step was to put the technology fully to work. In the pre-Internet days, our telesales division functioned primarily by selling over the phone, using a point solution to manage customer orders.

Starting in 1999, we reorganized our telephony-based call centers into interactive, multi-channel communications and coordination hubs, and recently re-named the division OracleDirect. This inside sales organization is responsible for telephone and Web sales, online product demonstrations and Internet seminars, as well as lead generation activities.

Having eliminated the technology barriers, we also had to re-engineer our business processes to enable the telesales and field sales organizations to work together more effectively. To formalize this symbiotic relationship, we created sales teams consisting of inside salespeople and field salespeople.

The paired telesales/field sales representatives share one territory, one sales target and are compensated on their joint performance. Obviously, it is to their mutual advantage to work closely together to meet their goals.

Telesales representatives handle smaller, less complicated transactions while building an opportunity base for the entire sales team. Field salespeople are then able to focus on larger, and significantly more complicated customer solutions.

Since instituting this change, we have found that our OracleDirect and field sales representatives collaborate more closely and communicate more frequently, even many times daily. This coordinated approach also improves customer satisfaction as they receive the most appropriate interaction with our sales force based on their individual needs.

In addition to bringing in more opportunities overall, OracleDirect is a success in its own right. It has grown dramatically over the past three years to just over 1,500 employees worldwide. The North American-based OracleDirect locations now handle approximately 80% of transactions and accounts for a significant portion of North American revenue.

The integrated sales structure has also been instrumental in optimizing staff knowledge and expertise. For instance, product experts are just as likely to be part of the inside sales organization as field sales. This allows product experts to be leveraged in more sales deals, and therefore be more productive.

Our underlying customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure also produces measurable gains in productivity, ROI and accuracy. For instance, many thousands of orders are placed on the Oracle Store (online) each fiscal quarter, without any assistance from sales representatives.

Moreover, with an automated quoting application, quotes can become orders, and order-processing errors have been dramatically reduced. A further benefit is that the number of sales administrative assistants (and associated costs) required to support sales representatives have been reduced by 80%.

In fact, Oracle's CRM solution has become the central nervous system of our entire customer-facing operation, and allows us to measure the productivity and effectiveness of our various teams. For instance, in the past, it was difficult to measure the contribution of the telemarketing group.

Today, whether fielding customer inquiries or making prospecting calls, the telemarketers enter new sales opportunities directly in the CRM system, which electronically routes promising leads to telesales representatives based on their sales territories and product expertise.

With a single global CRM instance using the same data across the teams, we can now track completed sales back to their point of origin, including the total revenue from leads generated by our telemarketing teams.

Use of Oracle's CRM solution has helped measure effectiveness between departments that own different pieces of a process. Before Oracle switched to an integrated platform, it was difficult to link marketing spend to actual sales results. While the marketing department received anecdotal feedback on the quality of customer lists, it was difficult to apply that in a meaningful way to a list with many thousands of customer names.

Today, the entire sales cycle is tracked automatically, from campaign creation to qualified lead and opportunity, and finally to an order on the Oracle Store. This information is analyzed and fed back from the system as business intelligence. Marketing now receives specific, quantifiable feedback on a list of 20,000 prospects. They can study the disposition of the leads and see how many translated into sales. Not only can they calculate the marketing costs per sale, they can evaluate every campaign's effectiveness by market, media vehicle and/or target demographics.

Best of all, they do not have to wait for the complete results to come in. During a campaign, they can test market receptivity at regular intervals, and refine their strategy accordingly. Marketing and sales now function as discrete parts of an integrated business flow, which has strengthened relationships across these groups.

Trade shows are another example of how Oracle's CRM solution has smoothed interdepartmental working relationships. Oracle hosts many critical customer trade events, at various locations throughout the world.

Before we moved to one CRM platform, customer requests and leads were collected at the shows and manually distributed. Some leakage inevitably occurred. Today, leads are entered into the system directly from the trade floor and instantly routed to OracleDirect for evaluation and follow-up.

The ability to see into the sales pipeline across departments and groups supports real-time management decision-making and forecasting. At Oracle, like most companies, sales forecasting was handled using spreadsheets. Each sales manager would consolidate the information provided by their salespeople into a spreadsheet, apply some judgment and then send it to the next level.

That supervisor would collate the managers' reports, apply some more judgment and submit it to their bosses. By the time the forecasts reached the top, the information was not only dated, but had been filtered through so many times as to be of dubious value.

At Oracle today, the same single instance of CRM is used in every region where we do business. This gives us a cohesive, unified view of our sales performance worldwide. Sales executives can make informed forecasts, market by market, about competitive quotes on the street and deals in progress, including when they are expected to close. They can drill down to a specific region, sales representative, Oracle customer or opportunity. Moreover, role-based portals allow us to provide each sales representative and manager with information relevant to what they do and 'need to know.'

In fact, OracleDirect sales managers have a second computer monitor on their desk devoted to performance metrics and business intelligence. At any time, they can see their real-time pipeline, sales, and progress against forecasts.

In summary, modern sales organizations can take a lesson from Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers' rallying cry, 'All-for-one and One-for-all!' To operate profitably and efficiently across sales channels, companies need to establish a collaborative culture where sales leads, customer information and collegial support are freely shared among all customer-facing groups. Finally, teamwork and cooperation must be rewarded.

With the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's marketing and sales organizations have learned that sales success starts with an all-for-one process. With shared, automated e-business flows, closing a sale is a true cross-departmental, team effort.