Constraint: Root cause of the sales problem
With DELTA T-Selling the Chief Sales Officer views his or her leadership task as operational planning and leading the whole "sales business system" - rather than just as sales process management.
Sales processes ("opportunity engine") only part of the whole sales business system
All sales processes together constitute a company's "opportunity engine". However, these are only a part of the whole sales business system. Many other functions define how the sales processes perform - like product development (which constrains the opportunity engine by the products developed) finance (which defines the budget available for the opportunity engine), etc.
Opportunity engine constrained = sales results unsatisfactory
If sales fail to reach the goal the cause is a constraint which hinders the opportunity engine to perform as required. This constraint only very seldomly is positioned within the opportunity engine - in most cases it sits in other functions within the sales system.
Find the constraints and resolve them - 6 steps
To find and resolve constraints go through the following steps: (more details on this "theory of constraints" methodology please find in Bill Dettmer's book "The logical thinking process"
1) State the question to which you need to find the answer - example "What keeps us from reaching 15% sales growth"?
2) Check each element of your sales business system for obstacles/constraints contributing to hinder the achievement of your goal ("what keeps us in Marketing …?, "what keeps us in sales channels..?", etc.
3) Build the logic tree of all obstacles into the form of a cause/effect tree.
4) Find the root cause(s) - at the "bottom" of your logic tree.
5) Build the plan to resolve the root cause constraint(s).
6) Lead the constraint resolution plan to its goal
If your analysis was correct and you executed the resolution plan: by resolving the root cause constraint your sales system should improve its performance. Now go back to point 1 to resolve the next constraint.