Over the last 11 years, I have helped dozens of private equity-owned companies modernize to improve their top line – either as a commercial executive within the company or as a private equity Operating Partner advising a company. It always amazes me how many of these companies lack a defined sales process. It’s one of the most foundational tenets of sales effectiveness and one of the most straightforward tactics to deploy. Every time we’ve deployed and adhered to a defined sales process, the distribution channel’s sales productivity has increased by double digits.
Here’s what a defined sales process does for an organization:
Organization
- Creates a common internal language for improved communication within the commercial team and throughout the enterprise.
- Drives accountability at the direct contributor and leadership levels.
- Improves organizational resource allocation by allowing operational insight into pipeline volume.
- Increases talent management velocity.
Performance Improvement
- Creates clearly defined steps to follow for improved sales productivity.
- Allows for the measurement of sales effectiveness (quality).
- Enables sales efficiency (quantity) to be assessed easily.
- Provides insights into developmental and coaching patterns for sales leadership.
Customer Insights
- Enables sales and marketing to easily understand competitive strengths and weaknesses.
- Develops an improved view into the buying process and how aligned it is to the sales process.
- Provides measurable insights into the buyer’s hard and soft requirements.
Forecasting Accuracy
- Creates a basis for the proper timing of a forecast.
- Enables effective sizing of opportunities.
- Identifies low and high probability opportunities based on process velocity.
Win/Win
- Allows a prospect to understand the selling journey they are taking, increasing their partner mentality.
- Enables a good handoff to implementation, creating long term relationships.
- Creates an internal “win” culture with consistent steps of selling and on-boarding.
Let’s connect on linkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lamancuso-b6549018/
About Revenue Vision Partners
Revenue Vision Partners exists to help revenue leaders enhance the components of their sales organizations and systems to improve revenue growth. By using continuously refreshed sales data, we can dynamically pinpoint problem areas and create solutions that allow our clients to be more competitive. We’d love to hear more about your challenges.
