Developing a Winning Sales Organization

I know what you're thinking. You're sitting there smugly saying to yourself, "Another stupid infographic from a company that knows nothing about my business. My company is different...we know how to sell...if only we could just fix our marketing, everything would be fine."

While having a misaligned marketing organization can impact sales negatively, the simple truth is that it's the job of the sales team to sell.

And now you're thinking, "My sales team isn't that bad. We had a pretty good year and I'm sure things will pick up now that we have that new [sales manager] [CRM system] [sales methodology] [sales guru] — fill in the blank with whatever magic bullet you're pinning your hope to. Effective selling is not achieved via any one special ingredient. No sales training event will transform your mediocre sales team into a revenue rocket. Building and maintaining a high performance sales organization takes planning, meticulous attention to detail, and a commitment to doing lots of little things consistently over a long period of time.

These 10 Key Imperatives for Sales Growth are the bare minimum of what winning sales organizations do to create and maintain above-average sales performance. If your sales organization hasn't mastered all 10, we should talk. Vicendia Partners can help you determine what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and most importantly...what you're not doing at all. We'll help you quickly identify the processes & people that are crippling your sales performance and help you fix it for good.

Now you're thinking, "I don't want to talk to a consultant. I hate consultants." Good. We do too. We are sales and marketing practitioners—not consultants. So call us at (630) 217-5948. We would love to talk to you.

Software Revenue Acceleration

Some years ago, a client of ours was, not surprisingly, debating how to accelerate software revenue. Their product and target market segment both set up nicely for a classic reseller channel - yet their efforts over several years had met with very limited success.

Our client's conclusion was equally unsurprising: the resellers simply lacked the necessary product knowledge, and their ability to grasp the finer points of the software was lacking. Sounds familiar?

It is a relatively common complaint at many software companies: the customers / resellers / partners / salespeople (circle the appropriate group(s), please) just aren't smart enough/skilled enough for our software to sell effectively. And very often it is noted that the group of people in question just don't have "domain expertise in our software."

That observation is almost always correct when seen from the development department of the software vendor: the supporters know less than the developers, the salespeople less than the supporters, the channel partners less again, and finally we find the hapless customer who is near zero in domain expertise in the vendor's product.

But if we flip around the point of departure, what the customer does have is domain expertise in the problem or process the vendor's software is intended to help solve. And the vendor's channel partner will have a relatively good grasp of the customer's process, but still less than the customer's own personnel. Backtracking all the way back to the software vendor's development department, it is there we find the least amount of domain expertise in the customer's situation.

So it's almost a law of nature that these most/least combinations fall along a relatively orderly spectrum. As one domain expertise falls, the other one rises. They work nicely together to make sure that the most important items at each locale get addressed properly.

It is the task of a software vendor to make sure that each link in the chain from its own development all the way to the end user gets just the right dose of software domain expertise. Then, assuming that the software product indeed solves the target market segment's problem, software revenue acceleration will follow.

Let Vicendia Partners help you map your software domain expertise against your customer's challenges and processes so you can accelerate your software revenue. Call us today at (630) 217-5948.

Sales Velocity...It Matters!

If there is one tool that has contributed the most to my selling career it is the Sales Velocity Equation from the TAS Group, and my friend and former colleague, Donal Daly. He describes his Sales Velocity Equation as, "The formula for sales success." I wholeheartedly agree.

Put simply, the Sales Velocity Equation focuses on the four levers of your business that influence the amount of revenue generated in a specific period of time (month, quarter, year):

• Number of deals (#)
• Average deal value ($)
• Win rate (%)
• Sales cycle length (L)

As you can see, making small changes to one or more of the levers of your business can have dramatic results in revenue. In the past, sales leaders believed that simply increasing the number of leads or deals in the pipeline was the best way to juice revenue. But I've found that focusing on increasing the other size of your average deal, increasing the close rate, and shortening the sales cycle are better and sometimes easier to influence, and have a much greater impact on revenue generation.

Don't believe me? Well, watch this neat little slideshow from my friends at The TAS Group and maybe you'll be convinced enough to give it a try. And if you're ready to put it into practice, give us a call at (630) 217-5948 and we can help.

Sales Velocity Equation from The TAS Group

WIll You Make Your Numbers in 2014?

According to the CSO Insights 2014 Key Trends Analysis, further penetration into existing accounts and improved customer loyalty both landed squarely in the top ten objectives for sales organizations this year. The same study reported that 94 percent of firms raised revenue targets for 2014, despite the fact that sales rep quota attainment was down five percent from 2012 to 2013.

Clearly, sales organizations will be feeling the pressure to hit their revenue numbers this year, perhaps more than ever before. If you are like most B2B companies, you expect much of that revenue to come from your existing customer base. But that’s easier said than done. Despite most sales teams’ best efforts, sustainable organic growth is a challenging proposition.

Take a peek at this organic growth infographic to gain fresh insights on driving revenue to make your numbers. If any of these facts give you pause, we should talk. Give us a call at (630) 217-5948.

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