Categories: Sales Leadership | Sales Qualification | Mission Critical Success Series
As a revenue leader, your timeline to results is critical. Stakeholders and board members want to see outcomes, and you need constant progress from your teams to reach ambitious revenue targets. No strategic pivot is immediate – many initiatives can take at least a full sales cycle to reach full adoption and have visible impact on revenue numbers. If you’re looking to supplement your strategy with something that can affect revenue as soon as this quarter, consider launching a qualification update or reinforcement initiative.
Qualification is more than just separating good deals from bad. A robust qualification framework enables sellers and managers to chart the buyer landscape, helping them consistently close every deal at maximum value on an efficient timeline. Implemented correctly, a strong qualification strategy is a jumpstart to reliable revenue, helping you increase board and investor confidence and drive higher valuation. Here are three behaviors that leaders are reinforcing with their teams now to amplify their revenue strategy and get a head start on results.Implement a Custom Qualification Framework
A customized qualification process is key to confident and accurate forecasting, improving your ability to give board members visibility into the business and deliver on objectives. To get there, define what a great deal looks like for your company.
Most sellers are familiar with a qualification system like MEDDICC, but it’s crucial to ensure that the entire sales team is aligned on a process that follows how your ideal customer wants to buy. Your buyer's decision criteria and process change along with shifts in the market, so customizing your qualification approach to those needs can have an immediate impact on the pipeline. Your qualification process should focus on sales teams' ability to answer these four questions:
- Is this a great deal for our company?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of this deal?
- What is our plan to address the weaknesses and who do we need to reach?
- Are we going to win this deal and when is it going to happen?
Equip your team to answer these questions by: (1) identifying what’s important to your buyers right now; (2) clearly defining your organization’s goals and customer profiles and (3) providing managers with the tools and knowledge to implement qualification standards.
Great opportunity management is key to a successful implementation. Create a framework for reps to actively map out deals with their managers and fill in the gaps in their qualification. These meetings should provide coaching opportunities as well as increased visibility into the forecast, meaning sellers can stop wasting valuable time and resources on deals that ultimately end up stalling or falling apart at the eleventh hour.
Instill Value Early and Often
A great qualification standard can change the way sellers approach the sales process. In addition to uncovering decision criteria, they can influence decision criteria by instilling value and differentiation from the very first conversation. At a time when many buyers are making price-based decisions, ensure your sales team is able to secure a fair trade. Equip them with the ability to build value conversations, so they never have to discount to save the deal.
Great value selling is rooted in a strong value framework and elite execution of fundamentals like discovery and listening. Reinforce these skills so sellers are able to incorporate value in the conversation before the customer realizes negotiation has even started. Encourage sellers to identify all stakeholders early on through thorough discovery. The earlier the seller gets clear insight into the full decision-making process, the more accurate the forecast. This resource goes in depth on strategies leaders can use to improve seller proficiency in value selling skills and drive great qualification.
Stop Chasing the Forecast
Empower your sales team to identify deals of consequence early, so they can chase deals more selectively. When reps stretch themselves too thin and devote too much time to non-ICP prospects, the forecast ends up fluctuating throughout the quarter. Conserve and maximize resources by developing a process that allows your sales team to define the forecast, rather than chase the forecast.
Rather than projecting a hopeful forecast and chipping away at it throughout the quarter, encourage reps to focus on deals they have confidence in. Early on, establish a concrete forecast made up of qualified leads. Then, as sellers continue to prospect throughout the quarter, attribute new early-stage deals to next quarter’s forecast to provide time for thorough qualification. This way, the deal size and timeline are confident by the time it’s locked in for revenue projections. No scrambling or last-minute discounting to save a deal.
Support your revenue team in a more confident forecasting approach by providing a framework for forecasting check-ins and clearly defining indicators of each stage within the deal. Brief front-line managers on the importance of establishing a meeting cadence founded in these indicators, enabling their reps to efficiently progress deals forward while prioritizing qualification. By rethinking the forecast in the lens of qualification, leaders can take the guesswork out of hitting numbers, create repeatable revenue and drive consistent pipeline.
Increase Investor Confidence and Boost Enterprise Value
Reliable forecasting and consistent qualification are only parts of the growth puzzle. If attracting more investors, satisfying board objectives and increasing enterprise value are indicators of success for your role, discover what has worked for leaders of elite organizations. Our ebook on increasing company valuation explores the strategies of unicorn companies who have surpassed $1B+ in enterprise value. We break down the actions their CROs, CEOs and SVPs took to deliver value, fuel growth and propel their organizations to the top 1% of the market.
