Think for a moment about your company's sales environment. Do you have inside and outside sales reps, managers, technical specialists and customer service people involved in virtually every sale? Do sales opportunities involve multiple product lines and models? Are there multiple decision makers and influencers involved in the sale? Is your sales cycle anywhere from three to eighteen months?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your company is engaged in "complex sales."

Don't be alarmed, you're not alone. The complex sale is the norm in the industrial distribution business. The products we sell are often more technical, less commoditized and subject to intense competition by products difficult to differentiate from our own. Opportunities are often embedded in complex, large- scale projects, and require various people within our own organization to work together to close the deal.

So how do we typically manage this complex sales environment?

There's documentation — field notes, sales call reports, quote logs, customer care tickets, proposals, emails, memos, faxes and so on. But in most cases this critical information is fragmented and confined to separate databases. These islands of data preclude effective collaboration. They constitute a series of people and events working separately, simply because they can't efficiently share information.

As a former vice-president of sales charged with growing an industrial sales team, I've studied how companies streamline communication, improve effectiveness and transform the bottom line — simply by improving the way they manage the complex sale. If you're looking for a solution to deliver this kind of impact in your organization, keep the following tips in mind.

Find a solution that satisfies your needs Envision your sales process. What are your pain points? What is your sales philosophy, and how is that reflected in your process? Start by mapping your current sales process and identifying the key areas you'd like to address. By doing so, you can create an immediately relevant checklist for evaluating any sales management solution.

Next, do your homework. There are literally thousands of sales software vendors. To find one that's right for you, look for those that know your business. They'll likely have the functionality that best supports your business processes, and can bring real-world solutions to your company without requiring a hefty price to "verticalize" your solution.

Once you've narrowed the field, ask for references of other customers of similar size with a comparable sales environment. Ask your peers who they do business with and who to avoid.

Walk before you run Many software horror stories involve ill-conceived mass rollouts that bogged down the complex sales process and created errors, reducing customer satisfaction and sales team effectiveness. In larger organizations, begin with a tightly controlled rollout to a small team or division that can help evaluate a solution's performance. As you continue the implementation, focus on isolating and optimizing key components of the complex sales process to realize benefits. Following these simple steps can ensure a smooth implementation, improve user acceptance and ultimately tame the complex sales process.