Diagnosing Your Revenue Generation Issues

At a recent speaking engagement, I asked a room full of CEOs the following question:

"What's the first thing you do when you start to struggle to hit your revenue targets?"

The resounding answer?

"Fire the VP of Sales of course!"

As simple and clean as that seems, chances are your revenue issues go beyond the competence of a single individual. Selling solutions today is a complex and competitive process typically involving the contribution of many parts of your company. How do you know where the breakdown is? Akina suggests a method to diagnose your sales approach to determine what specifically is causing your problems.

We all know the best way to solve a complex problem is to break it down into smaller pieces. Akina breaks down the sales process into the following components:

• Offering definition
• Lead generation
• Sales call execution
• Qualification, pursuit, and closing
• Account management and penetration
• Sales infrastructure

A great way to diagnose your sales issues is to bring together key members of your revenue team (sales, marketing, sales support, etc.) and facilitate an open discussion. Each team member will have different insights to key issues and working as a group will accelerate clarity and consensus. The purpose of the meeting should be to find the real problem to solve, not lay blame. Chances are, you will find issues with every aspect of your sales approach.

A logical way to drive the discussion is to work through the sales process components, one by one……

Offering Definition

Companies today are not buying "nice to haves". Your offering must be easy to understand and map to a top priority / problem of your target buyer.

In order to diagnose your offering, start with a pass at your target market.

• What is our target market?
• What is happening at a macro level?
• What are our target company's top three priorities?
• Who is our target buyer?
• What are our target buyer's top three priorities?

Next, focus on your current offering.

• Define what we do (elevator pitch)
• What problems do we solve?
• What is our value proposition?
• Why do clients hire us?
• What opportunities are good fits for us?
• What types of opportunities should we not pursue?
• How does our offering currently map to our target market / buyer?

How well positioned are you for current market conditions? Where are the disconnects? Did your team answer these questions consistently? How would the rest of your selling organization answer these questions? How do we make our offering more relevant to our target buyer?

Read More: Diagnosing Your Revenue Generation Issues .....contd.

Other Whitepapers:

• Technology Sales People – The New Success Profile
• Diagnosing Your Revenue Generation Issues
• Building a Client Service - Minded Staff
• High Impact Returns from Strategic Account Management
• How to Steer Your Firm to Greater Revenues when you're not in the Driver's Seat
• Sales Tip – Building credibility through "Discovery" Letters
• Selling to Multiple Decision Stakeholders
• Firm Leadership's Role in Retaining and Growing Clients
• The Pursuit Drill ™: Improve Your Sales Team's Ability to Close Deals

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