How To Build Your Sales Execution Blueprint for Success

Every sales organization needs a buyer-driven sales methodology that arms sellers with knowledge and tools to effectively qualify, manage and close sales opportunities. The right sales process should encourage and equip your sales team for success. If sales organizations don’t get it right, their sales execution process can actually hinder sellers instead of enable them.

Your sales execution process should follow an established blueprint for success. Execution may vary slightly, depending on your sales environment, buyers and remote vs in-person needs, but your benchmarks should remain the same.  

What a Great Sales Operating Rhythm Looks Like:

A great sales operating rhythm will:

1. Align your sales process with your customer’s buying process.
2. Establish customized standards for qualifying sales opportunities – both in and out.
3. Support sellers in consistently capturing, creating and communicating value.
4. Provide sales reps and managers with clear definitions of success in their roles and what good looks like as they work together to move opportunities forward.

If you're in charge of enabling your sales engine to support growth goals and increase valuations, consider these three key questions to assess, align and recalibrate your sales processes:

1. How consistent is the sales message?

Your sales reps are having conversations with critical leads right now. The challenge for many organizations is that not only are your reps up against likely similar competition or tough incumbents, but they're also up against a do-nothing or do-it-internally decision. How well your reps are able to differentiate your solution and attach to big buyer problems will play a major role in their ability to successfully win more and sell faster. Can you say for certain your sales message and sales consumable tools are able to help them beat tough competition? Do your reps have clarity around the business value your solution provides to customers, including how that value differs as your reps get higher and wider in a buying organization? Have your solutions or pricing models changes or shifted in a way that your reps aren't able to execute on?

Buyers need clarity in order to make a decision. Consider, these four essential questions that every company should be able to answer consistently:

1. What problems do you solve for your customers?
2. How do you specifically solve those problems?
3. How do you do it differently than your competition?
4. Where have you done it before, what's your proof?

Cross-functional clarity around the answer to these questions is key to enabling an entire sales organization to create and capture value in sales conversations that they can pull into final decisions and leverage to close for a premium. Segment's recent success and 150% increase in Annual Recurring Revenue over the last two years is an example of the power this alignment can have on a company's ability to significantly increase valuation and market success.

2. Does the sales process align with your buyer’s buying process?

Whether you pique a buyer’s interest online or face to face, your company needs a common language that drives consistency in front of the customer. Think of this common language as your currency of value.

Your currency of value consists of positive business outcomes (PBOs), required capabilities and results metrics that you use to align your solution with your buyers’ needs. Clearly defined roles and activities for sellers throughout the customer engagement process and established standards for opportunity qualification will help sellers create, communicate and capture value in a consistent way.

Consistent processes and messages that uncover customer needs and articulate how your solutions help address those needs, ensure that the right sales opportunities are identified, qualified and accelerated throughout the sales process. When sales leaders are under pressure to drive change the first step is often to define the sales initiative that will return the most impactful results. Depending on your organization's current challenges, a sales qualification and/or messaging transformation can improve your sales teams’ ability to increase average deal size and win rates consistently. The truth is, one initiative complements the other, and the true power of each is when they’re executed together. Consider the right approach for your organization depending on your sales team's most pressing challenges.

3. Does your sales process support your sales team?

An operating rhythm that consistently helps your team qualify, advance, and close sales opportunities is an essential tenant for sales process success. Ask yourself these essential questions to understand if your current sales process is helping or hindering your sellers:

• Is our sales process aligned with our customer’s buying process?
• Do we have a common language that drives consistent messaging in all communication channels and at each stage of the buying cycle?
• Do we have a standard process to ensure opportunities are qualified consistently?
• Does our operating cadence prevent sellers from taking short cuts in the sales process?
• Do we have clear customer outcomes that indicate movement through the buying stages?

If you want to get your sales teams working smarter, you need a well-defined sales process and qualification approach. Here are a few ways you can improve your sales process.

4. Is there clarity around what success looks like as sellers and managers execute your sales process?