Categories: Sales Transformation | Sales Conversation | Sales Planning
An elite sales organization is one that drives higher win rates, larger deal sizes, higher margins, and predictable revenue.
Can you confidently say you and your team excel in all of these areas? Whether you're launching a new product, moving to a subscription model or trying to meet accelerating growth rates, it is difficult to scale if you don't have the foundation in place.
When we work with new customers, we often map out a plan for improving sales performance. It starts with establishing a road map for the quadrants of sales effectiveness.
- Sales Message - the ability for your sales team to articulate value and differentiation in a way that has meaning for your buyers.
- Sales Execution - the ability for your sales reps to understand what they need to do during each stage of the sales process and how they can leverage appropriate resources within your organization to move an opportunity forward.
- Sales Planning - how your sales teams are able to build qualified pipeline at the territory level and accurately forecast your business.
- Sales Talent - how your sales organization is attracting, hiring and retaining top sales talent.
The more you have a cadence around these areas, the more your sales organization will exceed goals and out-perform the competition. If you're in a sales leadership position, you know you only have a short time to show results. The average tenure of a VP of Sales is down to just under two years.
Leaders of elite sales organizations often use the “draft in” approach, one that leverages your current best practices to build a more sustainable road map for success. If you wipe the slate clean with every new program initiative, you’ll be left with one-off achievements, rather than long-term success. Remember though, the key to being an elite sales organization is a shift in mindset, rather than a single action.
A high-performance sales team is the cornerstone to driving sustainable revenue growth. One of the most important responsibilities of any sales executive is providing your organization with the ability to consistently engage prospects and customers in high-value business conversations and the processes to drive efficiency on the back end. Elite sales leaders drive transformation, while maniacally focusing on (1) how their reps are engaging their customers and (2) how they are set up internally to support those reps.
We created a checklist to help you benchmark your own sales organization. Go through it and see how your organization is stacking up. Change what's working. Fix what isn't.
