The economic landscape is unpredictable. When you have revenue goals to hit, you don't have time to wait around for executional challenges to reveal themselves. As a leader, you need to diagnose and address sales problems before they show up on the revenue report, and you need solutions that can impact your revenue this quarter.
Uncertainty in the market and shifting priorities for your customers doesn't mean you can't meet your ambitious revenue goals for the year. Start now identifying how you can help your revenue team focus on the core revenue-driving activities that will help them build and close qualified pipeline.
There are four key areas of sales effectiveness that elite sales leaders help their team master to achieve consistent numbers. An organization that understands and executes consistently in these areas is capable of thriving in any environment. We’ve highlighted the key indicators of an underlying sales execution problem in each of the four areas.
Consider your customers. They’re likely facing the same economic uncertainty, budget pressure and growth ultimatums that you and your company are operating under. Does your revenue organization have a consistent message to articulate the value and differentiation of your offerings in a way that solves your buyers' evolving problems? Help your team cultivate a customer-focused mindset, so they can cut through the noise of a competitive market.
Cross-functional alignment on the value your solutions provide for your customer in a changing landscape is the key to accelerating growth. If your salespeople aren't able to articulate the business value of your solutions in a way that has meaning to buyer decision makers, then they’ll likely face these issues on a regular basis:
Create a critical connection between what your solutions offer and how they solve your customer’s biggest business challenges today, like increasing efficiency, driving revenue, doing more with less, etc. Get laser-focused on how your sales organization materializes your solution’s value in the marketplace and how your product can deliver on the positive business outcomes your sellers promise. These efforts will minimize buyer risk, customer churn and discounting.
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Whether you’ve already started to or not, reframe your sales message to align with your buyers' current, evolving problems. Even small tweaks in messaging and how customer success stories are shared amongst your customer-facing teams can make a huge difference.
We often refer to a sales messaging initiative as a way to enable the entire sales organization to get customer-focused. Through our Command of the Message engagements, we work to generate leadership agreement on the essential questions every company should answer.
If you’re looking for a broader solution that enables your entire customer-facing organization to focus on great discovery, then ask your company leaders the essential questions below. Building consistency around these answers is the first step to developing a sales message framework that enables your sales teams to sell at a premium, even in a complex selling environment.
Moving opportunities forward and maintaining a healthy pipeline are two critical areas many sales organizations often struggle with, regardless of the economic climate. Are these issues common amongst your revenue team or have they been amplified as the market becomes even more competitive?
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Given how the economic landscape influences your main buying audience, their buying indicators and your sales activities will shift as customer needs shift. Help your salespeople become skilled in getting multi-threaded in their deals (i.e., selling to more decision makers), so they can capture a collective "yes" for your solution.
To take it a step further, generate executive alignment around these critical sales process questions, then consider a broader, strategic shift in how your sales teams qualify in and progress high-value opportunities.
Accurately predicting revenue is always a challenge, but it can certainly be amplified when facing external market challenges. Right now, it’s more important than ever to ensure your team is spending time and resources on clients who will have the highest propensity to buy from you, those with a big business pain your solution can solve. If you struggle to get clarity on where your team's deals stand in the pipeline, you may be dealing with issues in your organization's sales planning process. These are a few common issues that also occur:
If you’ve spotted these red flags, consider how you can make effective changes now, while preparing a long-game, strategic sales strategy that drives lasting results.
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To drive immediate impact in the upcoming forecasts, revenue leaders often invest in improving and reinforcing manager coaching skills. Managers provide value to sales teams when they can coach reps on identifying gaps in their deals and refining their predictions before they commit them to the next forecast.
To solve sales execution issues within the planning process, high-performing sales organizations put processes in place that ensure their salespeople focus their efforts on the highest value sales opportunities. If you create a predictable cadence around territory, account and opportunity planning, you’ll improve forecast visibility and your team's ability to build a healthy pipeline. It starts by generating executive alignment on these essential sales planning questions:
Sales talent is one of the most overlooked problems that can hinder a bottom line. Many organizations experience hiring freezes during times of economic uncertainty, making it that much more important to cultivate the talent they already have. Consider how you can best support who you have now. Remember, your talent is your biggest competitive advantage. Small actions now, like helping your managers build their coaching skills can go a long way.
If you want to improve sales productivity, focus on how you are managing, coaching and retaining your sales talent. This process is the ultimate driver of sales productivity. Start by assessing where your talent needs further support. Here are a few red flags you may be seeing:
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The most immediate thing you can do to reduce performance gaps in your talent is to define what success looks like in your organization, in each critical role. Your reps will likely welcome any resources and training that will take them to the next level. Define for your teams what they can focus on to be successful. What does that mean for your company specifically? Think about your solutions, your processes and your customers' needs.
Get started now by asking your executive team and your mid- and front-line managers these essential questions:
Building great sales talent isn’t about hiring or developing “a-players”. Companies can build top performers by giving their existing sales organization a keen understanding of the capabilities and skills that will make them successful in their current sales roles.
As a revenue leader, you need ROI fast. Some initiatives can take quarters or even years to show tangible results on your revenue report. Invest in strategies that can improve performance in just a quarter and continue to support your growth goals throughout the year. Our CRO Strategy Checklist outlines the approach used by some of today's most successful revenue leaders, who successfully multiplied their company's valuation in under a year. Download it now.