In today's competitive marketplace, organizations must be able to achieve both top-line growth and bottom-line performance. The science of sales excellence helps you create a culture that is focused on helping your organization achieve this dual goal. By building a strong foundation for success, you can enable your business to see measurable results in the form of increased revenue and improved customer retention rates. Sales excellence isn't just an idea; it's an actionable plan that will help you build a successful future for your company.
Sales excellence is a sales strategy that can help organizations consistently outperform their key sales objectives.
In this guide, you will learn the five keys to sales success and sales strategies for achieving success in 2021.
You will also discover how it can drive top line growth and bottom line performance.
Explore 7 tips to achieve excellence in sales in 2021 as well as how it varies from organization to organization.
Top sales performance can be achieved by following the five keys to sales success. Discover how sales drives top line growth and bottom line performance with these central ideas that should factor into everyone's measure of it.
It will vary from organization to organization but there are core measures that contribute towards sales achievement across organizations.
See how you can achieve excellence and drive sales to help consistently outperform key growth objectives.
With the right sales strategy, organizations can achieve sales success and top-line growth with bottom line performance by following these five keys: sales management, sales culture, sales technology , sales processes and sales talent.
You will discover how to achieve sales success by following these five keys:
Sales Management : This includes strategic planning for business growth with clear objectives that are communicated throughout the company as well as managers who support their teams in achieving them.
It is important not to neglect developing skills like sales planning, sales forecasting or sales data analysis.
These are critical for sales management to have in order to support sales process and sales talent .
For example, sales management can help their teams by providing them with sales plans. The sales plan should include forecasts and quotas, as well as data analysis to support the team in meeting those objectives.
Sales Culture : Having the right sales culture can be achieved through creating a growth mindset with top performance achievers who want to develop further while being part of an inclusive peer group that supports each other's success.
Top sales performers are salespeople who want to constantly develop their skills and sales managers know how important it is to support sales talent .
For example, sales managers are responsible for coaching their salespeople through the sales process, helping them achieve quotas and providing recognition.
Sales Technology : While sales management focuses on the people, sales technology helps organizations by providing them with tools that can help boost sales performance.
This includes using data analytics for accurate forecasting as well as automated reporting through customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA).
For example, sales technology can provide sales managers with sales forecasts so they know how to plan ahead.
Sales Processes : Sales processes include planning for win-loss analysis , the sales forecast and forecasting .
Other important sales strategies are accounts receivable management , customer relationship management (CRM), sales force automation (SFA) and sales talent management .
For example, win-loss analysis is when sales managers analyze their sales data in order to understand if they are winning or losing deals. This includes tracking the number of won versus lost opportunities which can help them assess how their teams are performing against quotas.
Sales Talent Management : Sales talent management is about salespeople who are top performers and sales managers know how important it is to support sales talent .
It includes recruiting , on boarding, training and development through a combination of coaching, managing quotas and recognition.
For example, sales managers need to find the right people for their team by having an active recruitment process that focuses on sales talent management .
They should also train salespeople through coaching and mentoring, as well as provide feedback on performance.
You will discover how sales can help you achieve sales success. See why it is important and learn about these seven tips that companies are using to attain it in 2021:
- Continuous Improvement - Gaining momentum through continuous improvement means staying ahead of the market, making use of technology trends , having a strong sales strategy and building an effective sales team.
- Sales Talent Management - Attracting, developing and retaining sales talent is essential for maintaining competitive advantage in the market.
This includes hiring salespeople with a variety of skills to work on different deals as well as having an effective sales onboarding process that helps them learn about their roles within the company quickly.
- Having sales KPIs - sales management needs to keep sales teams motivated by having sales targets that are achievable. This includes sales quotas, sales forecasts and sales contests which can be monitored through sales analytics .
- Getting front line buy in - Salespeople who believe in the company they work for will support their team members and will do their best to achieve target sales.
It is important for sales managers to gain the trust of their salespeople by showing them how they are succeeding through sales analytics .
- Providing sales coaching - Sales coaching helps top performers develop further and it makes sense when you consider that sales talent management needs to include training as well as mentoring, feedback on performance and managing quotas.
- Sales technology - sales managers need sales technology that helps them forecast sales data accurately as well as automate reporting.
This includes using software to ensure salespeople are always up to date on what's happening within the company and with their customers.
You can measure it with existing sales analytics by focusing on:
This involves looking at key performance indicators (KPIs) which sales managers should define together with their sales teams.
This involves keeping up to date with industry developments as well as having a good understanding of what makes customers buy.
It is achieved through the right combination of processes and programs including:
There are a number of sales analytics tools which can help sales teams monitor their performance and improve it over time .
This includes creating a sales-friendly environment where salespeople are able to work in a way that suits them best.
Sales training can help with this by providing sales teams with the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to succeed.
Based on the work we’ve done with clients, plus our own internal research over the past five years, we’ve really tried to get to the heart of how organizations can successfully drive excellence in sales.
1. Identify the right opportunities-
It all begins with understanding how to skate to where the puck is going, to use a hockey analogy.
What we find with clients a lot of times is that they’re very focused on where the business is today — what segments and what customers are producing the revenue.
Sales leaders need to ensure sales managers are equipped with the right tools and information needed in order for them to make good decisions about which opportunities they should go after.
This includes sales analytics which should allow sales managers to see how their teams are performing.
- Sales Leaders need to ensure sales managers have access to tools and information needed for them to make good decisions about opportunities they pursue
- Developing the right culture - creating a positive sales environment where salespeople can work in ways that suit them best is a part of sales success.
- sales analytics tools can be used to monitor salespeople's performance as well as improve it over time.
2. Match the right opportunities with the right people-
In order to get the right people and the right partners in the right spot, there are three things you need to keep in mind. One is the go-to-market architecture (the mix of routes to market you use).
The second is the sales planning process to then allocate people to those routes. The third is to do the skills assessment to make sure that those folks are equipped to win the deals when they have the opportunity.
There needs to be a good match between salespeople and the opportunities that they’re pursuing in order for them to succeed.
This includes sales analytics tools which can help sales managers understand how their team is performing relative to competitors as well as benchmarking reports and comparisons with other teams within your organization .
- Matching sales people with sales opportunities is a part of sales success.
The sales planning process needs to allocate people into routes that they're suited for and make sure everyone has the right skills needed in order to succeed .
- The sales planning process matches people with sales opportunities and ensures that they have the right skills needed to succeed.
3. Deliver the perfect customer pitch-
You want to make sure that once you've discovered prospects and aligned the proper individuals and partners with them, those salespeople or partners deliver the right presentation.
And you shouldn't take any chances with that. You should use science and procedure to solve the problem.
You can achieve this in a few different ways. The first step is to separate your customer base so that you can understand their various wants.
The second step is to teach your salespeople how to listen so they can recognise what we call an opportunity's fingerprint and match the client to the value proposition.
Once salespeople have the right opportunities in front of them, they need to be able to win those deals.
Part of it is ensuring that sales management has a good sales process which can help guide their teams through it including how they should interact with customers .
By communicating effectively, salespeople are better positioned to understand customer needs and sell products and services that meet those needs .
- sales involves salespeople communicating effectively with customers and understanding their unique needs.
Sales management should have a good sales process which includes how salespeople interact with potential buyers such as the right messaging, timing of contact etc.
The perfect customer pitch is delivered by salespeople who are able to listen to their customers and differentiate the sales presentation based on what they hear.
- Salespeople should be able to listen carefully to understand customer needs, find opportunities which fit those needs, and focus sales presentations around them.
- sales excellence includes salespeople knowing how to present themselves and their products/services in a way that best suits the customer.
- sales success helps create positive sales interactions between customers and salespeople resulting in increased opportunities for both parties.
4. Do all of the above consistently-
Sales forces, by definition, are distributed across countries, product lines, and distribution channels.
At the same time, if you want to achieve sales excellence, you need a degree of centrally led initiatives and change, especially in large, complicated firms.
Companies who excel at this engage in sales operations to develop a set of capabilities that allow them to consistently drive the many parts of excellence in sales across several geographies.
The sales excellence journey is not a destination. It's an ongoing process that needs to be sustainable for the long-term growth of your company.
This means you need clear goals, key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones along with continuous improvement cycles so everyone on the sales team knows what they should be working towards .
To succeed, sales excellence also needs to be a team effort that includes sales leaders providing coaching and guidance on the best path forward.
Sales teams should have access to sales dashboards which provide them with accurate feedback about their performance . This will help guide how they work towards success rather than working in the dark .
5. Build the right operating model-
To drive sales excellence in a company — particularly large, complicated firms operating globally — you must be able to get in front of the right opportunities at the right time, with the appropriate people, present the correct pitch, and execute sales operations in a consistent and successful manner.
However, all of the above is wrapped up in an operational model that allows you to execute and make the decisions you need to make on a regular basis.
The degree of centralization versus decentralisation is one of the considerations you'll have to make under the commercial operating model.
The last big decision is around sales forecasting. There are a lot of companies that fall into situations where they have multiple groups forecasting, and it can get extremely burdensome and confusing.
Having clarity around who is going to forecast is another seemingly simple but actually very important issue in terms of an operating model.
