Rapid Sales Assessment Tool

How well your sales team articulates your company's value and differentiation is a critical element that can make or break a deal. As part of your sales strategy, make sure your sellers have a consistent messaging framework that gives them the ability to repeatedly demonstrate how your solution solves your customers’ problems and delivers value. Learn more on how to help your sales team become 'audible ready' to actively move sales conversations forward in a way that shows value and differentiation.

Enabling your sales team to deliver a clear and consistent sales message to your prospects and customers is an important next step in your sales strategy. Clarity and consistency don't come easy. In fact, it takes a focused effort to align your company around the key problems you solve for your customers. It also takes agreement on how you do it differently or better than the competition. Alignment around your message will give your sales team the framework to deliver a clear and consistent message of value. Learn more about how to get your message right.

To build on your current sales strategy, it's important to focus on enabling your sellers to have the right conversations with the right people. In order to do that, your team has to be great at tying your solutions to the customer's biggest business problem. Uncover a customer's pain and you'll get their attention. Your focus should be on strengthening your sellers' ability to ask great discovery questions that uncover problems that have the largest business impact. Teach your sellers to get to the heart of the problem.

To build on your current strategy, it seems like it might be time to shift your sales messaging to align with buyer's higher in the organization. Remember, the most influential people in the organization define and own the biggest problems; and funding is usually available for solving those problems. It's important that your sales conversation includes great discovery questions focused on budget, time, and risk. Uncover a customer's pain in those areas and you'll have their attention.

Large deals don’t happen without sellers clearly demonstrating your value and articulating your competitive advantage. And these things need to be communicated consistently, in a way that resonates with your buyer. There's both an art and a science to closing the kind of deals that allow you to charge a premium for your products and services. 

It sounds like growing your MRR is an important element in your current sales strategy. Companies with the right MRR model can predict revenue and profitability with a great degree of certainty. Successful MRR requires companies get a lot of things right in how they market, operate and sell. It also requires that you accurately define what you expect and ratify it in terms of predictable income. Look for resources on how successful companies increase their monthly and annual recurring revenue streams.

Successful companies are disciplined when it comes to sales talent. They define the right sales success profiles. They hire smart. They improve sales productivity by focusing on managing, coaching and retaining the right sales talent. Look for resources on enabling the fastest path to seller productivity.

Like many sales leaders, you'll be looking for increased sales pipeline numbers as a key metric in your sales strategy. If you want to get your sales numbers up, you'll need to ensure that your team's focus and energy is spent on prospects who are most likely to sign on the dotted line. You'll also need a team of great qualifiers who use customer verifiable outcomes to ensure they spend their time on opportunities that drive the most return. Look for resources on using customer verifiable outcomes to increase the health of your pipeline.

Time is money. So, every minute your sales team spends nurturing a lead that isn’t a good fit for your company is time that could be better spent on leads that could yield larger deals. If you're dealing with low margins in your current plan, it's likely you'll need to equip your salespeople with a buyer-focused sales conversation that's based on value. Tie that value to a customer's biggest business pain and you'll earn the right to charge a premium for your products and services. And that's what drives higher deal margins. Look for resources on how to increase your deal margins.

To bolster your current sales strategy and increase your sales win rates, it's important to enable your salespeople to spend as much time as possible on revenue-driving activities. Great qualification throughout the sales process ensures that the right opportunities warrant the right investment of time and resources. Look for examples of how great qualification drives increased win rates.

Build on your current strategy to ensure an accurate forecast by creating a true "line of sight" into the critical few sales activities that have the greatest impact on revenue. Successful companies drive predictable revenue by following a consistent sales plan and operational cadence.

It's difficult to have repeatable success without a consistent sales message. To drive increased revenue, you'll need a confident seller, a clear message of value and a successful sales conversation. A confident seller and a clear message of value is what will drive successful sales conversations, and successful sales conversations are what drives revenue.

If you’re dealing with low margins, you’re likely in a place where you need to equip your salespeople with a buyer-focused sales conversation that's based on value. Tie that value to a customer's biggest business pain and you'll earn the right to charge a premium for your products and services to drive higher deal margins. Look for resources on how to increase your deal margins.

Sounds like you have areas that need to be addressed but you're not sure where to start. Maybe you have a list of needs, but you're not sure which changes or actions would have the greatest impact. Now it's time to make the plan. You'll need leadership buy in and commitment at all stages of the engagement. Alignment is important - on the priority of the initiative and the outcomes you're trying to drive. That alignment guarantees that when it’s rolled out to the sales team – it won’t just be the new flavor of the month, but a sales transformation program with lasting bottom-line impact.

Congratulations. Defining your outcomes is a critical first step to driving a successful sales strategy. Build your plan cross functionally, so leaders from throughout your organization will be aligned around the agreed-upon outcomes. You'll need leadership buy in and commitment at all stages of the engagement. That buy in will also drive agreement around how your company delivers value. You've taken the critical first steps.

Congratulations. You've already made a critical and strategic decision about your sales transformation approach. Treating this as a cross-functional initiative will drive the alignment you need to ensure long-term success. However, alignment doesn't come easy. You'll need leadership buy in and commitment at all stages of the engagement. As part of the alignment process, you'll drive agreement around how your company delivers value and work to create consistency around communicating your message of value. We have resources and examples of how you can successfully execute on your strategic plan.

Great news. You've designated an internal champion to help drive your sales initiative. You're ahead of the the game! Your leadership team will champion the initiative, but it's critical to have an internal project manager to own the work plan, the logistics, the reinforcement and the communication. 

It all starts with leadership. Smart employees pay attention to how leadership behaves. That’s why leadership support and participation in all stages of the engagement is critical to driving success. The right sales effectiveness partner will help you define a success roadmap that aligns with your company's growth goals.

Sounds like improving the sales skills and motivation of your sellers is one of your top priorities. Here's some information on how to define and align your team's selling capabilities to successfully support the execution of your growth strategy.

It's critical to support your front-line sales managers. After all - they drive success from your front-line sellers! Make sure you're teaching managers how to be great coaches. Also, help your managers create inspection points with the sales team to drive successful adoption of your new methodology.

Reinforcement is critical to driving lasting change. Celebrating success is the fun part, but you have to be intentional about recognizing and communicating it. Make sure your managers are looking for opportunities to reward and celebrate success at both the individual and team level. Communicate well and celebrate often to drive motivation and long-term success.

Anecdotal success stories are effective in motivating your team, but it's the hard numbers that will determine if you're driving true sales transformation. Start by defining your organization's goals and the metrics you'll use to measure them. Set up scorecards that help your organization benchmark against actual results. Make sure quarterly sales reviews are happening and that managers are consistently reporting their progress.

When you get back to basics, sellers need two things: Confidence in their product or service and a clear message of value. Successful sales conversations drive revenue results.

Front-line sales managers have one of the toughest jobs in the company. They’re expected to motivate, coach, develop, reinforce and inspect their teams daily. One of the best ways sales leaders can support their front-line sales managers is to provide them with processes, content and tools to enable success.

It's important to define what success looks like for your organization and to measure what matters to you. You'll need a partner who will establish a enablement cadence, using things like executive and management scorecards, quarterly business reviews and commitments to action. The right partner will establish a measurement plan from the very beginning. Then, as partners, you'll both be held accountable for achieving it.

To drive long term success, you'll need a sales enablement platform that provides a way to consistently engage your sellers with content that drives adoption. See how the right enablement materials help coach, reinforce and drive success.

It's not uncommon for an outside company to ask you to rip and replace everything you've already done. A good partner should help you build on your best practices and draft into the programs and processes that are already working for your organization. You know your company best. Keep what’s working, change what isn’t.

High-performing sales organizations don’t get there by chance. They have a predictable and calculated path to growth. A true sales transformation partner will help you prioritize which opportunities will have the greatest impact on your success. They will also help drive alignment with the overall growth goals of your company. The journey starts here.