Sales Strategy

“Strategy Drives Results and Sales Process Improvement”

At Sales Development Expert we help you first recognize your Sales Strategies, then determine what factors if any may be in conflict with one another. When your Sales Strategies are in conflict with one another it delays success. Additionally, when your Sales Strategy is not communicated effectively your team is not marching to the beat of the same drum.

Think of Sales Strategy and alignment of those Sales Strategies as the guiding beacon for your business. The sales strategy is what gives purpose and direction to the day to day decision making of your Sales Leaders and ultimately your sales team resulting in overall sales process improvement.

This level of miss-alignment could be the result of many things. Managers could pretend to agree with what you say and then ignore it after your meeting or phone call. This scenario is likely because there is a problem with Need for Approval, suggesting that they cannot or will not push back if they do not agree with you. It is also possible that the strategies have not been communicated as effectively as possible. There are also some conditions that could be responsible for a lower than expected number here. We consider these to be no-fault and include, but are not limited to:

• Geographic Differences
• Business Turmoil
• 
Varied Markets
• Multiple Product Lines
• Management Layers

There may be a conflict when your account development priority is volume and your priority with regard to competition is to hold firm on price. If your fixed costs represent a large portion of your overall costs, holding firm may cause you to lose the needed revenue to cover those fixed costs.

If, for example, you chose potential volume and you intend to hold firm on price, volume opportunities often require up-front costs that make the short- term profits unattractive. If you have large fixed costs in your business model, volume rather than price (profit) may be the only win for you and your customers.

When you intend to use outside training and prefer to replace non-performers, make sure to invest in those who can grow and develop instead of training everyone. If you find that you must rebuild your sales organization, it may be wise to invest some of your training dollars in a strong recruiting program as well as sales process improvement.

Where there is no system, there is chaos disguised by busyness.

George W. used to make up words and the one that stands out most is: Strategery.

Strategery is the application and implementation of your strategies though your systems and processes.

It’s not possible to run a $5MM dollar business like you run a $30MM business. Nor is it possible to run a $30MM dollar business like you run a $5MM business. The trick is to run your business like it is one step up from where it is now. In other words you have to define your ceiling of complexity and stretch your resources until you can expand profitably.

Successful sales systems and processes are crucial to scaling. Without Sales Strategy, Systems and Processes it’s like the wild wild west. Everyone is running around doing what they believe is right and doing their best but, there is no way to harness and leverage success.

Sales Process Improvement

Do your Sales Strategy, Systems and Processes support high performance sales?

Sales Process – can you define it in less than 7 Steps?

Sales Systems – is it transferable?

Prospecting Systems – do they create consistent results?

Qualifying Systems – does yours create 80% closing?

Sales Coaching Systems- Is your Sales Manager coaching effectively?

Accountability Systems – Do you inspect what you expect?

Sales Strategy Systems produce pre-determined outcomes when implemented correctly. With no common sales language there is no consistent way to coach to a sales process. Without a prospecting system opportunities are lost. Where there is no qualifying system, time is wasted and pipelines are bloated. Without a coaching system it is just conversation. Accountability is one of the pillars of sales success.