Every single sales organisation wants their pipeline and revenue to be: Bigger, Faster and Simpler. Some want more deals, some want longer engagements, some want references to start their engagements or be a bridgehead, but they all want sales values to be bigger value, happen faster and be simpler in execution. Great in theory, how do you attack that in practise?
You’re asked to grow Sales and many, many factors may influence how sales grows. Many a CEO, CRO and Sales Director has claimed sales growth as personal success. Sometimes it may be, sometimes there they had some influence, frequently, it just happened to them.
When looking at changes that could be made to increase sales, what factors need to be assessed to understand the potential value they may have?
Potential Revenue Impact
How big an impact on your revenue could the change potentially make? If its not significant, why bother? Focus on Impacts that are
Time to Revenue
Is it quick to execute and, hence, influence short term revenue? If its not, it may still have great value, but won’t solves today’s problem. Don’t plant saplings if you want to be shaded from the sun, they need time to grow.
New Approach – not tried before
Is this a new and specific change or has it been tried before – most changes executed to attempt sales growth e.g. change the sales team, have been executed before, often, many times.
Likelihood of Success / impact
Will it actually make a difference? Be objective and sceptical; so many sales “programs”, new organisations, new people, new marketing models (how much have you spent on Adwords?), fail. Pick a solution that is, most likely to succeed – obvious, but you may find yourself not running with the herd.
Can the changes be measured and quantified?
If you can quantify where you are now and where you want to be – how can you make any change? While your increased Sales are the output metric – what are the inputs that cause the revenue to grow? Can you put metrics around the changes your implementing and demonstrate a causal link? If not sales growth may happen to you, but not because of what you have done – you’ll take the success of course, but it’s much better knowing you are driving it, and measuring it, yourself
Is it under your control?
Are you dependent on another body? If your success needs change to happen, how much of that change is under your control and direct influence. The further from your immediate sphere of control, the greater risk you carry as other priorities and goals become ever less aligned with your own. Own your success.
What factors, actions, changes might impact sales?
Increased Industry Buying Trends
Customers buying more is clearly a great way of increasing sales – follow the money as the old motto says.
Larger / Easier Sales Territories
Most sales organisations segment markets and territories enabling control and resource allocation – more opportunity = more sales potential but it doesn’t always, and frequently, doesn’t led to more sales as there are more potential engagements and more dilution of sales effort. Bigger is not necessarily better.
Improved Product / New Product
By definition a new product that meets more requirements of a customer in a unique fashion obviously gives potential for sales, but it is very rarely a quick change – especially in complex software environments. Also, be wary of the old adage, its your installed base that kills you – especially true when evolving product versions.
Better Sales People – Different People
The Best Sales people maximise your chances of success, this is self-evident. The challenge is to improve your position which is challenging, carries risk and is inevitably slow – recruitment period, notice period, training period – typically this takes months. Its process under your control but not a quick one. And will you be better served at the end of the process?
Better Sales People – Better Trained
If you don’t change the people, you can try and change the people by making them better at their roles. There are many types of sales training available – too frequently product based and many showing limited long term effects on the larger proportion of sales people. Individual coaching and mentoring is invaluable and gives measurable benefits, but as your span of control extends, your available coaching time inevitably diminishes. You might also ask how far have you gone already and what is the capacity available for short-term improvement?
Improved Marketing
A statement of the obvious. More money in marketing does not, necessarily, lead to more leads for sales; especially for smaller B2B businesses. Measurement of marketing changes having a causal impact on increased revenue is notoriously difficult – books are written on the options available and the risk carried; data privacy laws introduce new challenges. Improved marketing is an obvious benefit but the direct link to increased sales is not always visible and, equally, is not under your control. Budgets compete, timeframes may extend.
Prices Changes
Price Elasticity is Economics 101. Reduce the price and more people will buy – maybe. Increase the Price and the same customers will continue to but at a higher price – well maybe again. You may be in a position to drive a short term benefit by increasing your prices, but probably with a medium term risk of losing those same customers of introducing new competition. Is it under your control?
Sales Models and Playbooks
What is it you are selling and have you got the complete package a customer needs to solve his/her problems? Is everything built into your sales engagement? Can the customer find everything he needs without talking to you? Pricing, Roadmap etc Nearly every sales model and playbook can be improved – just like Kaizen or Six Sigma always drive improvement in business processes. The challenge is often who owns the whole package. If you want to grow sales quickly and simply … you do. There is always additional sales value you can surface, under your control. Do you really think you have everything covered already and there is no room for improvement? And ones you control and manage, quickly.
Mapped together we can build a hierarchy of activity and potential influence on Revenue.
Bigger, Faster, Simpler pipeline is under control if you maximise your value using a Systematic Value model where you measure current value, establish your potential and build an action plan to move between the two. There is no magic formula for growing revenue, but using the Sales Paradigms Systematic Value Model, you will cover all your bases and identify your potential.