OREANDA-NEWS. September 15, 2015. What drives sales performance and productivity? There are many voices trying to answer that question. At CSO Insights, now integrated with MHI Global, we have spent the last 20 years studying the evolution of sales and researching the differences between world-class sales performance and all the other hard-working salespeople, managers and leaders.

It’s easy to identify world-class performance; it’s in the numbers. The CSO Insights 2015 Sales Performance Optimization Study shows that high-performing sales organizations outperform others by 37 percent in revenue plan attainment, among other important data points. This is not surprising.

What sales leaders need to know is how these organizations outperform their competitors. What are the behaviors, attributes and best practices that top sales organizations do differently or do better than everyone else?

In our Dreamforce Sales Summit session, Distinguishing Best in Class Organizations from the Competition, Barry Trailer and I will explore the powerful connection between customer relationships and the level of process maturity.

We’ll present a powerful tool called The Sales Relationship Process Matrix to quantify this connection. The Matrix was developed by Trailer and CSO Insights co-founder Jim Dickie after years of analyzing and comparing the performance levels from our survey data. Relationships matter in sales – anyone with sales experience knows that. The key point that many organizations miss is the intersection of the customer relationship and the seller’s own sales process.

In our Dreamforce session, we’ll show you how to use this tool to map your own customer relationships and processes to the Matrix. Then we’ll build on that with the CSO Insights Sales Transformation Pyramid, a step-by-step guide to business transformation.

Trailer and I have always believed that in the hubbub of the many voices in our industry, reliable answers are always based on research, data and expertise.

Please join us Tuesday, September 15 at The Sales Summit at Dreamforce. We will be presenting at 9:00 in the Marriot and at 12:30 at the Palace Hotel. We look forward to seeing you. Attendees will be able to download the supporting research report for this session, “The Anatomy of a World-Class Sales Organization.” 

Joe Galvin, one of the sales world's most prominent thought leaders, is now a Salesforce Sales Community contributor. This community is a new collaborative networking group for sales executives sharing best practices and innovations in sales leadership. We encourage all Salesforce customers to join Galvin and other top sales thought leaders in the new Salesforce Sales Community. 

About the Author

Joe Galvin leads the MHI Research Institute, formerly known as Miller Heiman Research Institute, as Chief Research Officer. (Miller Heiman has joined with four other companies to form MHI Global.) His mission is to continuously research, measure, and analyze the best practices, innovations, and emerging trends for complex B2B sales organizations to provide clients with the insights required to make strategic decisions.