Vavricka Associates formed to carry forth providing and advancing the sales operating performance improvement approach that Trailer Vavricka, Inc. (TVI) pioneered over the last decade.

TVI was first formed in 1993 as Sales Navigation Systems, Inc., to establish the process/pipeline performance improvement approach. Throughout the 90's, TVI advanced with a parallel effort to directly influence the SFA-CRM evolution in automation for sales. My partner Barry Trailer and I decided to do everything we could to inject the sales operating fitness and performance level improvement vision into mainstream sales management, and sales automation, thinking.  

We began spreading the word by both speaking at the DCI, Ziff-Davis, and various other sales force automation trade shows. Barry regularly delivered DCI keynote sessions over 1993-99, being named a judge by Microsoft to its annual CRM assessment and awards committee. It may have be coincidental timing, but the operating with common sales process concept went from being virtually absent in 1993, to being globally recognized and universally recommended today as mission-critical operating foundation for best automation success. Of course, we never imagined it would take seven years of missionary effort.

Over this time span, we evolved a set of client work sessions to help sales operations implement the process/pipeline performance improvement approach. We experimented in various ways with numerous companies to define their selling process maps out of their best practices. As part of each initiative we'd educate the sales management team on how to consistently utilize the process to effectively coach improvement in sales rep execution, develop supporting how-to knowledge bases and tools, and streamline selling resource allocation. 

To prove the case for how automation could effectively support operating with a common process foundation and improving performance, TVI invented, developed, and tested three generations of prototype Opportunity Management systems. No commercially available SFA/CRM software offered the proper process/pipeline functionality, business rules, and performance data capture. 

To gain real-life experience and feedback for development, each prototype was deployed with client pilot groups in live sales production mode. We needed the software to properly implement sales process as needed by the realities of how selling/buying actually happens, and from the user's point of view (i.e. salesperson's) -- so that it would provide a simple interface that the salespeople themselves would find both very usable and valuable. Our first and second prototypes were named the Sales Naviguide System.

The story of our process and performance improvement approach was described in a series of articles that Barry strategically published in his monthly Sales & Field Force Automation magazine column, Sales Automation Journal, and the Culpepper Newsletter (all included on this website under Articles). Gartner Group assessed our first generation Naviguide system prototype and immediately published their recommendation of our OMS/Performance  Metrics system design and process mapping/implementation services (see technical note T-880-211 January 17, 1994). 

  Two of our prototype client partners elected to customize our Naviguide design into their own in-house developed systems.  Another client customized their newly purchased CRM system.  One client's case study was published in its entirety in Operational Performance Measurement, a book by quality management guru Will Kaydos, 1998, St. Lucie Press. Kaydos included it to show the model example of how to effectively apply the principles of process management and performance improvement in corporate sales

operations.¹ 

In speaking to the leading CRM software vendors about incorporating the advances we prototyped, each one found it to be compelling functionality. However, as resource constrained start-up companies in an infant, rapidly developing technology and marketplace, and locked into a basic feature-function firefight over immediate survival market share, their development efforts were inadequate to fully implement process functionality as we were advising. 

In 1995 Aurum Software offered to buy the entire rights of our design. However, we were just about to bring our second prototype into live testing, and felt it was premature. Onyx reserved a non-exclusive license in 1997 for the right to use the second generation Naviguide design in its future development. Later in 1998, TVI entered into a joint development agreement with SalesWare, Inc., an application developer in Florida, to continue with developing our third version of the system from all that we learned in live-testing the second prototype. 

Then in the first half of 2000, GoldMine Software (now FrontRange Solutions, Inc.) decided to purchase this latest system version we named Sales Process Manager / Vital Signs, then in its third generation of development, to integrate into its CRM system called FrontOffice™. CEO Vance Brown brought Joe in as Executive VP, and Barry as Worldwide VP Sales.  

However, when GoldMine restructured and elected to postpone integration of Process Manager/Vital Signs, Joe opted to take his first career sabbatical. After a rejuvenating break, he decided to rejoin the sales operating fitness/performance improvement movement.  The range for successive improvements in corporate sales operations, and the incredible leverage available for increasing results productivity and predictability, are just too compelling. Especially with today's economic conditions demanding serious sales productivity improvement and COS reduction.

Before TVI, Joe Vavricka and Barry Trailer first met in the mid-80's as independent contractors associated with Miller-Heiman, Inc. They were licensed by MHI to sell and deliver live training sessions, and continued working with clients to implement the Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling, Managers Coaching, and Large Account Management methodologies. Many sales operating problems offered additional client consulting involvement. After first hand exposure to several hundred sales forces and training several thousands of sales people, managers, and trainers, Joe and Barry both came to the conclusion that sales methodology, no matter how effective, would not root into the typical traditional sales operation that lacked a common sales process framework. 

In their experience, the annual "training event" approach normally taken to increase a sales force's performance level failed to do so more than 90% of the time. And with turnover rising past the 30-40% levels, any skill improvement gained was 99% gone from the company in less than three years. 

This repeating loop is what Brian Joiner calls "eyelash" learning in his book Fourth Generation Management. Without a common process framework embedding its operating practices, an organization has little effective capability to remember or to share the ways and tools it learns to improve its performance. Any learning that occurs remains locked in the individual's heads -- who take it with them when they are promoted out or resign. The eyelash learning organization suffers recurring memory loss -- left with having to be perpetually restarting its learning curve from ground zero -- instead of sustaining gains made, leveraging them across all the workers, and continually building further performance capability. For way too many companies, today's sales pipeline close rates are about what they were operating at 25 years ago.

There is simply a much better way: the "Power of We."