Secrets to Building a Sales Powerhouse
Accelerating Sales Performance
It is the petrol in the fuel tank. Without top line revenue growth, it does not matter what else you do, the result will be the same, atrophy and death. Here is some food for thought if you want to supercharge your top line growth.
Hire ethical sharks – Ethical sharks are hungry. They want to close this sale and the next and the next and the next. They also genuinely care about thier customers and their co-workers. These are the people who leave nothing to chance. No stone is left unturned in their relentless pursuit to close. There are very good technologies to find people with the right DNA and experience for this profile. Our most successful clients are relentless at using technology to assist in finding the skills, assessing their teams against it and continually growing capability.
Invest in Rainmakers – Sales has become very much a team sport. Getting the right players on the field and the right people in the room, is key to closing business. Many of our most successful clients have invested heavily in a small group of highly influential thought leaders. They use them as shared expertise. These are people who can go toe to toe with the C-Suite and really provoke thinking in new and different ways. Ways that help them drive their own top line growth.
Create One Voice in Proposal Defenses – There is so much effort that goes into getting meetings with the right people, but so much is left to chance in the conversations. Having a disciplined approach to having client meetings is essential. This is especially true when you get a chance to defend your proposal. No one should be allowed to attend one of those meetings without the right orientation, training and skill. These meetings give you a chance to showcase your talent, those who will actually be delivering the project. This is what really closes the sale. If your preparations are just about wordsmithing slides, you are really missing the boat here. These meetings give you the opportunity to show you understand the win for the customer and to show you will deliver on your promise. Give your team the skill and confidence they need to succeed. Sometimes your most tech savvy project people are not comfortable in these types of settings. Make sure you have a trained and ready to go group who can perform well in these settings. Don’t lose the sale because your team shows up badly at the nth hour.
Establish and Measure Time Signature Discipline – It is simply amazing to us how many sales organizations have no idea what activities actually close business. Knowing this is power. Once you know that, you are very disciplined around how your sales people spend their time. Sales leadership must be trained to look for and coach around leveraging those activities that close business and be very disciplined about not allowing their sales people get dragged into things that are time sucks.
Settle for Only the Best Sales Leaders – Having the best and most well-trained sales leadership team is absolutely imperative. All too often we promote the best sales people to management. Sales leadership is all about disciplined process. The best sales organizations are disciplined and leave nothing to chance. This begins and ends with sales leadership. Our top eschelon clients have found really good sales leaders with unorthodox backgrounds.
Differentiate and Organize Around Customer Sets – Not all customers are created equal. I repeat, not all customers are created equal. You must be very clear on your outside-in view of customers. We often get too caught up in our own internal departments, structures and people and let that drive how we approach customers. Do not get caught in that trap. Do not design around your own internal dynamics. If you have some very large strategic customers, you may want to organize yourselves differently with them to be able to sense and respond. Perhaps you have other customers that do not need as much customization and require less moving parts. You might organize your work around them equally different. Gain wisdom around your customer sets and evaluate it for further sales opportunities.
Map Your Strategic Customer Ecosystems – Spend exhaustive hours on mapping the strategic customer ecosystem. Have a home for this. Do not leave it to chance. Understand their financials. Know the risk they are willing to take and what they expect you to take. Know what they are trying to do to drive their own top line. Know all the decision makers and all the decision influencers. Know how they like to buy. Learn what you need to do to be easy to sell for and easy to buy from related to this key customer set. When you are losing a key sales person on one of these accounts, record everything they know before they leave. Do not lose a single opportunity to cultivate knowledge on these customers.