Newly Appointed Sales Leader?

Increasing Sales Effectiveness

How to Deliver Sales Success Before the Honeymoon Period is Over!

You are new to the role of sales director and possibly new to the organisation – a big gun with an impressive sales track record.  It may be that your organisation is looking to grow or diversify into a new market where you have expertise, or it may simply be that the previous guy has jumped (or was pushed).

Whatever the reason for your new job, there will be a lot of hope and expectation weighing on your shoulders. You are the White Knight, the Savior, The One who will lead the team, turn its performance around and set the company on the course to sales success!

But to deliver on that high expectation, you need to understand whether your organisation is geared up to enable sales or prevent them?

So what will you do first?

  • Sit down with each of your sales team to understand what they do, what’s in their pipeline, where they are against their targets, how reliable their sales judgment appears to be?
  • Understand what your organisation is good at/ bad at and learn what you should/ shouldn’t be promoting to customers?
  • Meet with the other department heads to see what they do and how well (or otherwise) they interface with your sales team?
  • Drive the length and breadth of the country to meet your happy (or unhappy) customers to see why they do (or don’t) like you?

All of the above?

Depending on the size of your organisation, this initial “familiarisation” could take a considerable length of time.  The same time that is ticking against your first quarter target clock…..

So how do you quickly balance the need to get under the skin of your organisation’s sales capability and learn enough about its idiosyncrasies to make you effective, before you lose the goodwill of your sponsors? 

It is a dilemma that needs to be faced quickly, since very few organisations will afford a new sales leader the luxury of 6 months, or even 3 months “settling in” period, to get a handle on what is going on and understand how they can make the required business impact.

Here’s a simple plan to sales effectiveness:

  1. Get all the stakeholders of the sales process together in one place and enable the meeting through an impartial facilitator
  2. Use a proven benchmarking model which has been tried and tested by your peers to deliver improved sales performance in other enterprise organisations
  3. Quickly identify the performance gaps and define a realistic action plan to fix them
  4. Measure performance again at the end of 90 days to demonstrate the performance improvement you have driven in your new role as sales leader

This approach has been deployed to great effect by many enterprise businesses that have applied Get To Great® Sales Performance Improvement to deliver a step change in finding, winning and retaining customers.  They have increased their ability to engage, qualify and close profitable sales as a direct result.

This proven and trusted framework for sales transformation is valuable to any business looking to tackle specific challenges such as lead generation, increasing its sales conversion rate, reducing cost of sale, or for continual improvement of its sales capability.  It is particularly relevant in organisations going through a major change such as new sales leadership and there are additional benefits in applying Get To Great® early in your tenancy of the sales leadership role:

  • you have no “baggage” or allegiance to the way things are done currently
  • you can bring your external knowledge to the debate
  • you will be able to demonstrate a measurable step change impact as a result of you joining the organisation

Download our Testimionials PDF to see what your industry peers have to say about Get To Great®

21
FEB
0

Get to Great, Sales Effectiveness

Attracting and converting sales opportunities – are you even on the buyer’s radar?

Increase SalesWhen I think about how straight forward finding sales opportunities used to be, it makes me smile. Reminiscing back to the days when you leafed through various directories to identify target organisations, kept up to date with the business news by reading the FT and researched a company by reading their annual accounts.

Then having identified a potential target, you would pick up the phone, relying on charm and charisma to get past the receptionist / PA to the main decision maker to sniff out a potential opportunity and schmooze your way to an appointment.

These days, the boot is completely on the other foot.  Thanks to the internet, the buyer will be so well informed, often the first you will know of an opportunity is when you are approached to provide a proposal – non-ideal on so many levels!  The likelihood is you will have no insight, no relationship, no influence – and quite likely, no bid!

On the other hand, companies who have recognised and executed on a digital marketing strategy that connects with current buyer behaviour will be loving the fact that their cost of sale has dramatically reduced and their win rate has increased.

To test which camp your company is likely to be in, start by answering these simple questions:

• Are you easily found on Google – does your website rank highly for search phrases your target customers are using?

• Do you capture visitor details – for example newsletter subscriptions or to download content of value?

• Do you have ways of showcasing your solution – for example online webinars, YouTube videos or explainer animations?

• Do you regularly update your blog with interesting and relevant content?

• Do you publish white papers or e-books which influence the market?

• Are you active on relevant social media channels or within specialist interest groups?

• Is your company LinkedIn profile current and presenting a positive experience of your company?

Will you feature on the shortlist?

Find Out More

25
NOV
0

Get to Great, Marketing Effectiveness, Marketing Tips, Sales Effectiveness

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