According to an HBR article, wise executives and management tailor their approach to fit the complexity of the circumstances they face. This, of course, begs the question: how correctly are leaders managing the complications vs. complexities of B2B sales productivity? The article notes that unless leaders correctly read the complexities of a situation, they’ll place themselves and their organizations at further risk. They’ll not only make worse decisions, but also create more problems when their management style isn’t appropriate to the situation.

In one sense, B2B sales productivity is pretty simple. All it requires is that effort invested create real value for every buyer. As Mark Roberge of Hubspot so elegantly puts it, “Always be helping.” Yet, if it was that simple, why is it that so many firms struggle to improve their sales performance? 

Perhaps it’s because we’ve been trying to improve B2B sales productivity in ways that assume it’s complicated when it’s not. Complicated situations tend to be best managed by analyses that reveal one right answer to a detected problem. Once found, this one right answer then really does fix the problem.  

One example: let’s fire all our underperforming sales reps, replace them with more appropriately skilled new hires, and team performance will undoubtedly improve. Have you ever tried this tactic? Did its impacts on improving sales performance ever disappoint you?

Perhaps an analysis-paved path to improving sales performance is a fruitless hunt for a ‘one right answer’ that doesn’t exist. As one seasoned sales executive recently observed, "sales performance seems increasingly random, and unrelated to the quality of reps; from afar, it seems increasingly like a game of whackamole in which you give it your best and hope for the best."

Perhaps it’s time to manage B2B sales productivity as a complex (rather than complicated) situation.

The HBR article suggests complex situations are best managed:

• As a process of discovery
• Informed with metrics
• Depicted as patterns

Things get discovered by uncovering patterns. Patterns often highlight blockages or leakages in the flow of a string of events or supply chain. Problems that get detected and fixed aren’t expected to be ‘the fix’, but rather just part of an on-going process of de-risking uncertainties. The focus is on eliminating little mistakes before they compound into bigger problems downstream. Fixing one thing rarely fixes the whole thing, nor is that expected.

If your B2B sales situation is complex, rather than complicated, then manage it as such. In doing so, you’ll focus on improving your sales productivity one small executional mistake at a time. It will be much easier than finding that elusive "one right answer" that everyone else is looking for; or firing that one giant, silver, bullet which never seems to be enough no matter where it’s aimed.

This post originally appeared on Amacus.net.

John is the founder and CEO of innovative information inc., makers of Amacus. His firm provokes improved B2B sales productivity by helping sales teams see and improve the buyer value of their sales practices. Follow John at @jcousineau.

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