The wealth of information available on the internet is changing everything – including traditional approaches to sales. Now, there is no need for a sales rep to serve as a walking brochure – customers can find out everything they need to know about a product at the click of a button.
So, where does this leave the traditional salesperson and the overall value that they provide to the business’s ability to generate predictable revenue?
If the sales team remains stuck in old-style approaches where reps make a minimal effort to understand the customer’s problem, but rather just ‘flog’ product features and benefits, the business could face a grim future, with shrinking and unpredictable revenue.
Traditionally, sales success has been based on hiring and incentivising sales reps who have the gift of the gab. This approach creates many challenges for business owners and executives trying to achieve exceptional top line growth that is consistent and consequently predictable.
A major issue is dependence on ‘unicorn’ sales reps who have been gifted with the natural ability to build their own process of guiding the customer through the sales cycle. At the end of the day, the company will end up with a situation where the unicorn sales rep is making up 80% of the revenue target and the rest of the team is being paid a premium through a commission just to take orders.
This traditional approach impacts deal size, where the rep plugs an immediate hole for the customer, instead of becoming a trusted advisor who is actively involved in solving problems for the customer and selling a complete tech solution.
The only way to tackle the shortcomings of traditional approaches is through a tech-enabled, well-crafted lead generation and sales engagement process that delivers predictable and consistent results.
I always say, sales reps have two ears and one mouth, they should use them proportionally.
C-suite executives need to consider embracing a new more diagnostic selling process to better serve customers, while at the same time solving the challenges, such as long sales cycles, low margins, smaller yields on deals, and unpredictable sales forecasting and revenue.
Setting the scene
Below are a few pointers on how to build a sales team that delivers exceptional and predictable sales growth year-on-year:
Positioning: At a high level, positioning speaks to identifying the correct groups of customers the business should target, understanding the problems that exist in the business, and the experience the customer wants when having these problems solved. Positioning needs to be driven by top management, insights gained from existing customers and new prospect interactions. Positioning will ensure the business and sales team are geared towards solving problems for well-defined customer groups, ensuring a sales process that adds value and not irritation to the customer.
Customer and market analysis: It is important to then acquire a deeper understanding of how the customer wants these problems solved – what is the experience they want? Build on these concepts to provide insights into the industries and verticals the business is currently adding the most value to, which is hugely worthwhile in guiding lead generation, needs analysis questions and messaging.
Business context factors (PESTEL analysis): Unless the company holds the overwhelming market share, there is a lot of work to be done to eat its competitors’ lunch. PESTEL analysis plays an important role in helping the business position itself to remain relevant despite economic, political and technological risks.
Competitor research: Mapping competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and differentiators helps the sales team ask the prospect the right questions and position their business or solution.
Lead generation: The insights gained from the positioning strategy should be used to build a lead generation and sales process that delivers predictable results. The process needs to distribute customer-centric messaging that speaks to the problems the prospect might be facing and the experience the business provides in solving them.
Sales engagement
The most successful sales outcomes occur when the sales process stays focused on helping the customer diagnose and quantify the cost of the current problem and then co-creating a solution with the customer to ensure the right balance between cost, risk and ROI.
Needs analysis: The needs analysis process should be designed to help the sales rep navigate a meeting that involves a lot of questioning and listening, as opposed to talking. I always say, sales reps have two ears and one mouth, they should use them proportionally. In the first engagement – the needs analysis meeting − the sales rep should ask the right questions and avoid solving the first problem the customer brings up. They should keep the customer engaged by talking to them about their business, the customers they serve and the experience they provide in servicing customers. The rep should then probe for problems that might exist in the absence of their solution or the non-delivery of the current solution. The rep needs to then unpack the causes of these problems, understand the business consequences, and help the customer quantify the true cost in rands and cents.
Co-create the solution: Once the rep has identified the problems, causes, consequences and the cost of same, and all has been documented, the rep should then work with the customer to co-create the solution that the customer believes is the best for their business. This gives the customer a hand in developing a tech solution that will solve their problems, making the solution being offered more compelling. Done well, this ensures the deal signs itself, instead of the rep having to push the customer into signing a deal.
Sales management: In a properly structured, documented and tech-enabled processes, gaps in sales performance are easier to identify and address. For example, for sales reps whose deal size is stubbornly low, they may need training to improve their approach to needs analysis.
Sales talent: Success depends on having the right skills in place. Employing the wrong talent is costly and time-consuming, therefore the business needs to build out better sales recruitment processes, with data or science-based interviews and psychometrics to ensure the company no longer depends on ‘unicorns’ for business growth. Sales enablement should be an ongoing process of benchmarking, evaluation, training, support and technology to ensure sales teams are properly equipped to drive growth.
The C-suite role and impact
As the foundation of the organisation’s revenue growth strategy, sales must be driven from the top. The C-suite needs to establish the direction for the entire business, or risk misalignment further down in the sales team.
One can’t build a successful lead generation and sales engagement process in isolation from the rest of the business. The strategy around positioning is the guiding light for all strategic decisions to follow and gets everyone singing from the same book.
A structured approach to sales processes informs forecasting for the business owner, who then gains greater clarity on exactly what sales are in the pipeline, and how likely they are to result in revenue.
Once strategic processes have been formalised, technology should be deployed to digitise and automate them, which creates transparency on how sales are progressing and where potential challenges lie.
Share