There's so much opportunity with sales excellence. Sales is no longer a numbers game by itself, but a constant relationship opportunity where sales excellence is critical to a sales executive’s success. It is ultimately the focus and optimization of three key areas: people, process, and tools. It is these three keys that you should be looking for when searching for the right Sales Excellence partner.
Sales leaders are the battlefield commanders and People, Process, and Tools is the canvas. A sales organization’s strategy is to capture the majority of a market. This requires certain knowledge points – locating the best course of action to maximize revenue using cost-effective sales models, developing an account strategy that optimizes the total addressable market, driving the sales story-line that goes beyond pipeline updates to actionable insights that focuses on unblocking customers’ usage and consumption. In our work with sales organizations, we’ve found that great sales leaders demonstrate the knowledge to correctly deploy field or inside salespeople, to segment the market into verticals, and to specialize sales teams by product or customer types when necessary. But this is not enough. The sales organization is unique and unlike any other department of a company. The best sales organizations have strong leaders who exercise “battlefield” control and establish a thriving culture that all team members must abide by. Great sales leaders employ their experiences to determine strategic direction and coach team members individually. Most importantly, they know how to keep the team on track and focused on winning. By arming the sales executive with a strategic front around People, Process, and Tools that pushes for greater success.
PEOPLE• Coaching Adaptability - There is a range of selling styles by which salespeople can achieve success. Therefore, a sales leader doesn’t employ a one-size-fits-all coaching style. Rather, they adapt their style to suit each sales team member. Regularly coached is team effectiveness. This factor is calculated by averaging total quota achievement across the number of salespeople on the team. For example, if a team of 15 sales reps who each had $20M quotas sold $260M in total revenues, the team effectiveness factor would be 86% ($260M of actual sales divided by $300M of quota). Generally, when we work with sales executives and their teams we see about 93% effectiveness factor. A good sales excellence partner works with the sales team and management to essentially give a day per week back to sellers by managing time-consuming processes and CRM entries. This coaching adaptability maximizes role success and drives quick results.
PROCESS
• Control Alignment – We’ve seen the best sales leaders who closely monitor and strictly enforce a formal sales process are more likely to exceed their quotas. The ability to seek control of the daily behavior of their sales teams, may sound like micro-managing, but like on a battlefield, consistency and predictability is key. A solid partner will take inventory of your sales process, analyzes gaps, and recommends solutions for optimizing team effectiveness. CRM data-entry is usually 1/3 of a seller’s time a week. In a scenario with a client, we’ve been able to drop that down to less than 4 hours a week providing them more time to sell to eager customers.
TOOLS
• Target Fixation – The sales leaders we work with end up developing their target-motivated and deadline-driven mindset. As a result, they have the natural disposition to fixate their team on achieving their revenue goals at the exclusion of all else. They block out distractions and compartmentalize negative news that might sidetrack their team or cause their department to flounder. They keep their team focused and moving forward with a sense of urgency, regardless of the circumstances. The best practice we’ve seen when working with clients is to build an all-in-one sales dashboard to highlight account propensity, pipeline velocity, and quota attainment as a few examples. When sales organizations have such a tool available, critical business decisions are made quicker driving deeper traction with customers, every sales leader’s goal.
The best thing you can do when choosing a sales excellence partner is to do your research on them. Talk with the people at each potential partner, read their blogs, dive into their results for other companies. I happen to work at a sales excellence partner who believes these three key areas and it’s what we deliver each day to our clients. I wish you luck on your search and I would be happy to connect with you.
