What Is The Sales Chasm?

September 14, 2018 Bob Benninghofen

Excerpt

This article is intended for small business owners (SBO’s) or small and medium businesses (SMB’s). It describes what a sales chasm means, the chasm's characteristics, and how leadership can help cross the chasm.

Remember Geoffrey Moore's the Chasm?

In 1991 it was revolutionary and is now considered a classic about moving a tech product from early adopters to an early majority - closely associated with the technology adoption life-cycle.

What does this mean to you?

A Focus on Small Businesses

We are borrowing a few of Mr. Moore's ideas to explain what actually exists in many small businesses today, versus what we know is really possible. We believe that the distance between what exists in small business businesses today has companies on the wrong side of the Chasm because many are not using contemporary sales best practices and lack professional sales management.

To further complicate the challenge, many small businesses are also weak or ineffective in their marketing efforts. Combine this apparent distance between their effective and growing competitors, and you can sense the lethal behind-the-curve state of dimming futures.

The point of this article is these three missing components represent a Sales Chasm which must be crossed, not only to survive but more importantly to thrive. When small businesses implement these components, they can cross the Sales Chasm and their businesses will be on-track to grow and prosper. Do any of these chasm-wrong-side conditions (e.g. no contemporary best practices, no expert sales management, and/or limited and ineffective marketing) sound similar to your own business? If so, please read on.

Where does this Sales Chasm show up?

It can show up in many places, regardless of the type of business or industry in which you operate. Yet, this most often occurs in companies that have fewer than10 salespeople - as a starting point. And also with businesses that don't have a solid lead generation, lack a repeatable sales process, uneven sales performance/sales skills and unpredictable sales results. Is this hitting home for you yet?

Expert Evidence of the Sales Chasm

Instead of taking our word for these very common challenges, we invite you to review the research division of the Miller Heiman Group, CSO Insights, in which they published their Sales Performance Optimization Study Key Trend Analysis in 2016. The study identified a number of important barriers (Footnote 1) that sales management saw which thwarted them achieving their sales objectives.

While the study makes references to many trends and topics, we believe this Sales Execution Challenges chart match closely with our contention about the SMB sales Chasm.

Small Businesses Business Life

We realize that your business life is hectic and at times you're like the red arrow (i.e in the image close by) passing through a maze attempting to solve the attention diverters and make real progress. Sometimes we all get in that unproductive position. But, it doesn't have to be that way.

Process Can Help

Since we come from a process orientation with our information technology and business background, it is easy for us to spot many of the challenges and issues the small businesses have to deal with daily. We recognize the issues appear insurmountable, but they are not at all.

In our experience, there are a few non-complex solutions which can produce real change. We suggest the word "change" can have a negative effect on you, yet as a calming notion, let's shelve an in-depth review of it for the moment. (Special Note - here's an article that could open you to establish a positive environment - easy ideas that will support your efforts).

Short-Term Doable Non-Complex Solutions

We have laid out some purposeful solutions where you can benefit most with a marginal investment of your time, effort and money. The suggestions are meant as guidelines to get you started making forward progress and movement in crossing the Sales Chasm.

This introduces the idea of setting a few company beliefs (Footnote 2) in place as a starting point: beliefs that everyone can rally around and take-on as their own.

The image close by represents a conceptual idea about how choices are made when associated with underlying beliefs.

Consequently, we have defined five important beliefs which we know will have a major impact in your business: 1) excellence; 2) servant behavior; 3) solvability; 4) participation; and 5) contribution. You can implement these beliefs with your own detailed definition of what they mean for you and your business. The difference between these beliefs and core values is the beliefs must have a specific measurable outcome, where core-values usually aren't associated with specific destinations. Most often published core-values become placeholders leadership's favored ideas. Yet, they are mostly for public consumption and don't correlate to what occurs inside the business: there are classic examples but will remain nameless to shield the innocent: some of our friends work in these businesses and we don't want them exposed to harm.
Understanding of some common systemic business symptoms which likely exist in your business. This article provides some important insights into topics which will be helpful in your awareness - see the blog article footnotes: 2) the point that all things become bankrupt over time; and 4) the Balanced Scorecard Institute's Strategic Management Maturity Model (SMMM) which ranks the maturity of a company from level 1 to level 5.
Gain insights into what organizational inertia means and how that might be affecting your business. And, while you at this investigative activity, score your business with the questions from this thoughtful self-analysis.
Understanding exactly where your sales organization is today when compared to contemporary best practices. The recommendation is not to make any real change inside your sales organization until you really understand what's actually going on. Don't fire or hire salespeople or sales management, don't invest in sales training, and finally don't invest in sales based technology: until you have a thorough understanding from an analysis on what's occurring with your sales organization. For ideas about how to go about this analysis activity, read the highlights of a Sales Best Practices Audit and download the free eBook introduction.
Take the results from the Sales Best Practices Audit report and share the findings with your executive leadership team, your group of trusted advisors and colleagues, and any mentors who are associated with your business: ask their opinion and feedback of the analysis report - the primary goal is sanity checking, especially of the items which have been identified as working and those which are not. Trusted advisors might include your current SMB service providers such as your attorney, accountant, banker, or your partners and investors. Have them give priority to your request and ask them to respond within a few days.

Are You Ready to have Change Happen in You and Your Business?

This is probably the toughest question for any business owner to ask themselves. We suggest without discipline, high motivation and determination, you may not be either willing or ready to make the commitment necessary to move forward.

If you have answered yes to the above question and are still wondering about all this information you been given here, we suggest one more review for yourself. Try taking the Quick Business Review to see how you stack-up - it's about being on-purpose in your business.

Footnotes

Miller Heiman Group, CSO Insights, Sales Performance Optimization Study Key Trends 2016, Page 6. Copyright 2016, Miller Heiman Group, All Rights Reserved. Requested permission for reference use submitted 9/11/2017.