by Dave Watts
What are the most critical sales tasks your organization needs to address if your business is to succeed?
For the last four years, I have worked extensively with startup and early-stage companies and have spent countless hours coaching them on investor pitches and sales approaches that will help them acquire customers (i.e., demonstrate traction). Almost invariably, the weakest links in both the investor pitch and the sales approach are their go-to-market strategy and tactical execution plan (for both marketing and sales). Rarely are these steps well-researched, quantified, and planned. Even worse, the companies often have a fuzzy understanding about what both the sales and marketing functions are and how they relate to each other.
One classic example is the confusion over whose job it is to generate leads. Is it the job of marketing, or the sales guy or gal with the right rolodex? Or is it the job of both—or maybe neither, because if the product or service is good enough, customers will discover it on their own.) The wrong answer will cost you a lot of money.
Nor do these deficiencies apply only to start-ups: many small and middle-market companies are not much better off. In fact, their weakness in marketing and sales planning is often the biggest single factor keeping them from reaching the next level. Sales is nearly a universal source of frustration for entrepreneurs and CEOs.
There is an abundance of both real-world and academic evidence showing that companies that follow the right checklist for building a sales function will continue to experience sales success in a sustainable and scalable manner, year after year. While the particulars vary according to the specific characteristics of the business, the fundamentals are universal–because sales is not a dark art. It is business function, just like finance or manufacturing, and it requires certain key elements to be successful.
What are those elements? At a high level, think about the following list. How many of these boxes can your organization honestly say it can check off?
1) A comprehensive sales/customer service CRM system that addresses the full life cycle (from initial lead to repeat customer), allowing data-driven management decisions. (This is equivalent to a set of books for finance.)
2) A clear, comprehensive, and detailed view of your market and a realistic assessment of your best opportunities and how to go after them. (This is a marketing task.)
3) A complete, in-depth understanding of the customer—one that lets you know them better than they know themselves. (This task belongs to both marketing and sales.)
4) A detailed understanding of the your competitors and their strategy—one that lets you make educated guesses about their next moves and how they are likely to react in a competitive sales situation. (This task belongs to marketing, but is based on feedback from sales.)
5) A clear and compelling value proposition—your core “elevator speech”—that is so much a part of your company culture that it can be repeated verbatim by everyone from the CEO to the unpaid intern. (This comes from the top and is a sacred mantra for sales)
6) A defined sales process that can be taught, improved upon, and leads to predictable closes.
7) A strategy for your sales organization (including direct, indirect, and channel partners) that clearly and fairly lays out roles, responsibilities, reporting structure, territories, and channel boundaries
8) Motivators for sales——that are consistent with your business goals and personally rewarding to the sales people and those who support them.
9) Sales metrics based on driving the behaviors that are consistent with your business objectives and are realistically achievable based on a bottom-up analysis. A sales career planning and growth strategy that addresses individual needs for coaching, training, and the addition of new responsibilities.
10) A hiring profile based on characteristics that are shared by the successful sales people in your organization.
Dave Watts | Principal | Giant Harvest Sales Consulting | daverwatts@msn.com