Launching a Sales Initiative

Bringing in the right sales consulting firm can be a game changer for your sales organization. Things like shorter sales cycles, predictable revenue and improved sales productivity can take an organization from being a company that struggles every quarter to one that facilitates a path to repeatable revenue growth. 

Oftentimes, you as a leader know what needs to change and what improvements need to be made. Changes won't happen without ongoing reinforcement from management. For many organizations, the challenge lies in having the bandwidth to solve them. Bringing in a sales consulting firm isn't a magic bullet. However, it can often help to have an outside perspective to pull the best ideas together and move the unproductive ones to the side. 

What sales leader doesn’t want his or her organization to sell larger deals more quickly? If you’re leading a large complex B2B sales organization, choosing a partner who helps you build on your own best practices may be the fastest way to not only reach, but exceed your numbers this year.

An outside perspective can drive the measurable results you, as a sales leader, are trying to achieve. Often sales training services that are provided by an outside party are more likely to gain buy-in and impact since the company is making a large investment in the initiative. In other words, they want to make sure they get their money's worth.

It's a conversation that can be uncomfortable. When we are talking to sales leaders and executives, we are most often dealing with very smart people. They know how to lead, how to sell, what's needed to be successful and perhaps more importantly, what's not. The phrase we hear a lot is - "This looks great, but we can do that ourselves". Our answer to that comment is always, "Yes, you could. But, why would you?"

Determining the budget line item for a sales initiative can be difficult until you start talking to vendors. There are a multitude of sales consultants out there with prices that vary just as much. Once you determine the key knowledge gaps you're trying to fill in your organization or the challenges you're trying to overcome, then it's time to connect with the right solution for your budget and pain points.

You know what’s working within your sales organization. And, perhaps more importantly, you know what isn’t. Maybe your sales team isn't focusing on value in the buyer conversations, and they're giving up too much margin or losing deals all together. You need better access to the economic buyer and frankly, a better understanding of how your prospects buy.

Whatever your goals are and no matter the challenges you're trying to fix, there is no doubt that aligning your sales initiative to a broader company goal will gain you more buy-in from cross-functional leadership and get you more budget to move the needle.

There are hundreds of sales consultants and trainers in the marketplace. All of them promising a motivating and change-filled program for your reps. However, anyone who has been in the sales game for a while knows that many of these sales programs fall flat. Sure, they can be motivational for your team, but if the right steps aren't taken before the training, the initiative loses steam the minute the compelling speaker leaves the room. There are a lot of steps that a leader needs to take to create lasting change, but one key component to any successful change initiative is to ensure that the content, tools and processes are customized to your organization and your buyers.

The challenge in driving repeatable sales growth often lies in developing a road map to correct the problem for the long-term. The root of that problem is typically a lack of alignment among senior leadership on how to develop a revenue engine that the sales team can execute. It can also be difficult to move a sales initiative forward if your leadership team can't agree on the mechanism to course correct. If you're trying to move a sales initiative forward and convince your leadership that investing in the new program will make a difference, you need a plan of action. We help sales leaders do this all the time. Here are our best tips.

If it has become apparent that you need to lead a sales initiative to improve sales rep performance, there are some key steps you need to take before you even think of scheduling a sales training event.

We like to think of a sales initiative in three key parts. A critical focus on each component leads to results with long-term impact.

There are a lot of sales training organizations out there. Their blogs, tweets, LinkedIn posts may appear the same, but often there are some key differences between them.  That's the purpose behind us writing this blog post. We want to give those of you who haven't experienced a Force Management training some key reasons why it's different. 

Force Management worked with ClickSoftware to improve sales productivity. They were recently sold to Salesforce for $1.35B. Prior to that sale, we asked their SVP of Global Sales, Joe Marcin to share his perspective on his own sales initiatives and driving sales effectiveness.