Categories: Adoption and Reinforcement
Creating true change within your sales team, and the revenue results that follow, takes more than a set of spreadsheets and a simple day of training. If you implement a hasty training session, you’ll short-change yourself and your salespeople. Creating organizational change requires time, commitment and a plan for reinforcement that drives lasting results. When done right, a well-thought-out strategic initiative creates transformation in a way that accelerates growth and powers valuable exits for growing companies.
Here are five ways sales leaders can create top-performing sales organizations that drive significant bottom-line impacts.
1. Become Value Focused
Best-in-class companies sell on value, attaching their solutions to their buyer’s biggest business problems. If your company is growing rapidly and you find yourself leading a sales organization that has jumped from startup phase to mid-market, you may be familiar with these sales execution challenges:
- A focus on demos and product features instead of business value.
- Salespeople selling one-time deals, not digging enough to get higher in the business.
- Losing too much margin as a result of price-only negotiations.
As a result, you may be in charge of increasing win rates, deal sizes and retention revenues. Challenges like these often require a holistic approach, one that aligns the entire organization around the value and differentiation your solutions bring to the marketplace. If these challenges and goals sound familiar, consider reviewing Segment's story. Segment is a B2B high-tech company that was acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion. Their CRO, Joe Morrissey recently shared the holistic approach they implemented to enable their sales team to increase annual recurring revenue by 150% over two years. Consider how you could take a similar approach to enable your sales organization to sell on value and deliver critical revenue outcomes.
2. Go Beyond the Conversation
Getting to the root of ongoing sales execution problems and solving them fast is key to accelerating growth, competing in the marketplace and frankly, providing value as a sales leader. Start by quickly prioritizing your sales team’s biggest challenges. Get beyond the numbers. Assess your sales organization and look for the key indicators of underlying sales execution problems in each of the four areas of sales execution. Then, define clear, actionable next steps on what’s needed to course-correct those issues.
Segment's CRO, Joe Morrissey discusses a 90-day approach he used to define sales execution challenges and their bottom-line impact. Consider his approach and understand the first steps you can take to capture necessary input and support from company-wide stakeholders.
3. Create the Processes and Structures Required to Sell Bigger
When looking to increase revenue, you may already be looking into ways to build a sales engine that predictably produces the results you need. Best-in-class companies use their consistent processes and value messaging to close larger deals. Those organizations use a formal, buyer-focused sales methodology and often a customized sales qualification methodology to enable their salespeople to focus on high-value opportunities and close them at high margins.
MEDDICC has quickly become a favored qualification methodology for sales leaders who want to drive predictable revenue growth and accelerate valuations. If you're considering a MEDDICC implementation, see how you can maximize its impact on revenue results and ensure scalable growth. This guide outlines how MEDDICC works with an effective sales process and a value selling methodology to create an environment where sales reps know how to execute, managers know how to coach and leaders know how to accurately predict revenue.
4. Get an Outside Perspective
Setting and achieving measurable results takes a rigorous effort, experience, and often a partner who can help you avoid common setbacks. As a sales leader, you may be too close to the problem to see what really needs to be improved. Outside experts have the benefit of impartiality and the need to succeed, as their business depends on your results. If you plan to leverage a partner to move forward with your strategic initiatives, understand what successful CROs look for to ensure measurable sales impact.
5. Commit for the Long-term
Whether you're planning to launch a strategic initiative or you're in the thick of reinforcing your SKO right now, your ongoing commitment is crucial to success. Successful sales leaders make it their job to understand where their salespeople are right now, and what's needed to support their organization's long-term growth and success. Then, they commit to making it happen. How can you communicate your commitment and drive that same commitment from your entire organization?
Show your commitment through your words and, most importantly, your actions. Here are a few steps to take throughout the journey:
- Stay involved in the planning of your strategic initiative.
- Join in during the training exercises.
- Do the pre-work that you expect reps and managers to do, and show them you've completed it.
- Celebrate successes after the fact in all-company emails, meetings, etc.
- Support your managers in driving adoption (i.e., schedule all-hands manager calls, provide manager-specific training, give managers tools to measure rep performance.)
- Implement a Management Operating Rhythm (MOR) to gain visibility and be present in key moments.
Define What's Working. Fix What Isn't.
Whether you want to increase your average sales price, improve the predictability of your sales process, create message consistency or attract top sales performers, you need the tools and processes to get there. Once you do, you’ll effectively engage your customers and create the environment for true sales transformation. Define what your sales organization needs to move the needle and how you can provide value as a sales leader by helping them get there. This rapid sales assessment will give you the customized roadmap you can use to get started.
