By Guest Contributor Charles Mention | president and founding partner of TFM Consulting
What a homicidal maniac from the comics can teach businesses about sales force management
Every serious fan of the Marvel Comics series “Daredevil” remembers Bullseye, a dastardly villain and the archenemy of Daredevil. Bullseye could hit anything, no matter how small, by throwing any object, no matter what shape, weight or composition, from any distance, no matter how far, even around corners.
He was a hit man, so this skill was advantageous. But his narcissistic, psychopathic personality often drove him to commit his atrocities openly and exposed him to frequent capture and fierce battle with Daredevil. His ego even drove him to sport a target on his forehead, defying anyone to match his marksmanship.
While Bullseye is a fictional character (and not remotely a healthy role model), there is a lot that business can learn from him. Acutely accurate, versatile, obstacle-friendly, driven, determined and keenly competitive: what executive doesn’t want that person?
One business function in particular – sales – has a lot to gain by adapting to practices based on these characteristics, in a transformation tactic called the Bullseye Selling Model (BSM).
Conventional selling is based on one very simple principle: As quickly as possible, sell as much as possible, for as much as possible, to as many buyers as possible, for as long as possible.
For most companies, sales force pay plans maximize performance to this principle. Higher sales values drive higher salesperson income. This seems logical. In fact, it seems downright fair. The salesperson works harder, brings in more revenue and therefore deserves a larger slice of the pie… right?
Maybe not. Conventional sales strategy assumes that every sales dollar equally impacts the bottom line – but that’s simply not true. Every product or service carries costs, etc., that are at least somewhat unique. Selling Item A can very likely have a quite different impact on the bottom line than the same unit sales volume of Item B, even where the sales price for the two items is similar or even identical. Yet the conventional model would give similar reward for selling both items.
OK, suppose that’s so. Why not, then, base sales force pay on sales margins versus price? Better, admittedly. However, sales margin is calculated on individual products and services. Unfortunately, a company’s offering is seldom produced that way. The mix of products and services at a given time has a great effect on profitability of any item at that time.
Conventional sales force compensation plans work perfectly when actual product cost and margin are accurately known. Unfortunately, they typically aren’t. To close the gap, many firms combine revenue, margin, etc., to compute commissions, and some even adjust pay on annual or quarterly earnings. Even with these worthy efforts, conventional strategies can promote behaviors that erode, not raise, corporate profits.
Enter that mercenary homicidal maniac, Bullseye. Each product or service in a company’s portfolio has a cost profile. That profile details the product’s base cost, as well as inconsistency in cost performance.
By plotting each item on a radar-like chart with the lowest-variability items nearest the center and the highest nearest the edge, a series of circular bands that very much resembles an archery target or dartboard appears. Training and coaching the sales force to be more consistent in selling products nearest the “bull’s-eye” (center) of this chart will maximize margins. To encourage salespeople to do this, the bands translate into variable commission levels, which give greater rewards for “selling to the bull’s-eye.”
Ironically, a company that sells only bull’s-eye products and services will eventually be unable to compete against globalization, commoditization and similar strategies. Maximum competitiveness results when the sales force adopts the Bullseye Selling Model, leveraging combined margin performance.
BSM enables strategic sales planning to get and remain in concert with continuous improvement (Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality, etc.). It promotes continuous improvement transformation in sales, which is otherwise difficult to realize.
The BSM-transformed sales force resembles Marvel’s Bullseye:
–Acutely accurate: able to “sell to the bull’s-eye” on a high percentage of orders.
–Versatile: able to balance sales across margin performance bands.
–Obstacle-friendly: able to “sell beyond the paycheck” to meet buyer need, not commission.
–Driven: able to price on feasible near-term improvement targets, not present cost.
–Determined: able to “up-sell,” “add-on,” promote and bundle “from the bull’s-eye out.”
–Keenly competitive: able to focus on margin, not commissions, to achieve success.
Unlike the egomaniacal Bullseye, sales can’t go this alone. Neither can they give undue focus to any single item (as did Bullseye, whose obsession with defeating Daredevil often put him in harm’s way). Instead, they must integrate BSM with cross-functional sales and operations planning to realize and sustain continual margin growth.
