There are many challenges facing business today with B2B sales and marketing requirements having seismic change in recent years regardless of the company size. To understand and diagnose the current challenges, I used my 15+ years with P/L expertise with $100+M in quota coupled with the 8+ years of entrepreneurial leadership execution leading sales and marketing organizations to diagnose the current market conditions environment. Using the ‘Inquisitor Learning Methodology” (ILM) to diagnose business challenges that help define critical underlying difficulties facing organizations for 2021 and beyond. One of the most difficult challenges, especially for large enterprise organizations is getting consistent delivery of sales results from their sales organizations and teams. Only 43% of front line sales reps made their quota and that was down 13% in a year.
To help uncover the root cause of Sales Pro’s quota challenge, we used the ILM or “Inquisitor Learning Methodology” that asks discovery questions to gather and synthesize information to determine the potential underlying problems. Then, overlay that synthesis with a quantitative and qualitative analysis to align and validate the information. Those are combined to interpret the data to then respond by taking action. This methodology I developed over my career leverages the understanding of the data correlations to create the details below include the following recommendations to help Sales Teams exceed quota!
CEO’s must enable their Sales Organizations to have a proven, documented Sales Process Methodology that is taught, trained, followed, measured and frequently updated. It should include the following components:
Lead response: Many closed sales come from the company that responds first to an inquiry or lead. Timeliness is important metric to track.
Follow up: Providing updates to guide prospects through the end-to-end buying journey will close more sales. Understanding buying behavior and content consumption are key metrics to track.
Learning plans: What is the learning plan when onboarding new team members. What is the learning plan for sales processes, product knowledge and new product role outs. Tracking who has completed what is critical.
Track individual Sales Pro’s Percentages: What is every sales team member percentage in the sales pipeline process? Lead to close? Proposal to close, etc. This is critical in tracking and understanding success.
Recurring Pipeline Reviews: There must a recurring review of the pipeline opportunities, top deals, best opportunity to closes and with investment to understand lost opportunities. This should be a consistent review so everyone understands their goals and recurring quota’s.
Companies that have this recurring methodology produce 18% higher growth.
Another key element CEO’s must review, and track is Sales and Marketing partner to generate revenue growth. Marketing and Sales should have one goal to produce consistent, replicatable revenue for the company. Tracking the various steps, stages, pipelines are critically important, yet the bottom line is revenue growth! Sales and Marketing have to partner to achieve the highest level of efficiency and success. Here are some important elements of cooperation to achieve:
Lead Generation: Generating high quality leads that produce revenue is the responsibility of both organizations yet leads for the sake of leads is highly inefficient and uses valuable resources. Leads that close is the goal and must be tracked and holistically understood.
End-to-End Purchasing Journey: ~50% of all B2B companies going through the purchase decision making journey complete research prior to engaging a sales professional. Most do this in 2 specific ways:
Self-learning: Customer purchasing journey includes trying to understanding their pain point or problem they are trying to solve and is there a solution available.
Self-Discovery: Customer purchasing journey also includes what solutions are available and what vendors are able to provide a solution.
Content: Invest in hyper focused to help simplify the purchase decision journey with specific use cases. These use cases should provide guidance, minimize uncertainty and deliver buyer confidence.
Improve Content: Invest in content and detailed product information on your website, industry trade publications, think tanks, use cases and white papers for your prospects to engage in self-discovery and self-learning of content.
Funnel Stages: focus content for each stage to the pipeline stage to assist the purchasing journey to move the next stage.
Increase Digital Presence: Invest in website, industry trade publications, think tanks, use cases and white papers for self-discovery and self-learning options that lead prospects to making decisions.
CRM Utilization: Sales and Marketing should use, follow and track in the same application. This ties into pipeline methodology and process.
Shorten Sales Cycle and Gestation Period: 75% of all B2B sales take > 4 months with 18% >12 months. Tangible strategies and tactics should be tested to reduce the purchase process. There must be test investments made seeking to reduce and streamline the journey.
Third, CEO’s should inspect the investments being made in their customer facing teams. Survey after survey demonstrate the gap between success and underperformance is linked to teams knowing how to achieve and have the knowledge to perform their responsibilities. Here are some important trainings to help Sales Pro’s achieve their quota:
Sales Representatives: Sales Professionals need to understand how the company best sales team members are performing and what actions they take. This was identified in the sales methodology section and each rep must be trained how and what works best for your company. This practical training will be different than where they have previously worked.
Track and document the Habits of your best Sales Pro’s: How these successful leaders do things starting with preparation through closing, what they do daily, weekly and monthly that creates revenue.
Sales Leaders: All Sales Managers need to understand how to manage the pipeline with the correct strategies and technics for your business. This is not universal, though some elements do remain constant. This is a ‘how to’ training, on coaching versus inspection, what deals to prioritize, each rep percentages, impact opportunities and what their role is in the business. This type of training results in 9% faster sales closes!!
Learning plans: As mentioned above, creating a learning plan for each team member leads to revenue growth and great success.
These are 3 areas for improving the CEO’s organization that will lead to revenue growth. These must be wrapped in a communication plan that would be shared and explained to the organization ensuring the team knows why these initiatives are being taken and what the expected results from the initiatives that will lead to revenue growth and sustained increase in performance.
If you would like to discuss how I have implemented these strategies and initiatives please reach out so we can talk about you and your company.
Note:
These elements that are incorporated into the post:
Real World Experiences: Lessons learned from my experiences are always bolded and blue.
Critical Competencies: These are tangible proven skills sets that I have developed over my career. These should give insight into my competency and are highlighted in yellow.
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