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Diagnosing Your Revenue Generation Issues, continued…

Lead Generation

Probably the toughest challenge company's face right now is booking meetings with their target buyers. Many lead generation activities are focused on getting the attention of the wrong people at the wrong level. Misplaced lead generation efforts raise the cost of sales and lengthen sales cycles.

Walk your team through the following exercise:

Who is our target buyer?
What is our message to our target buyer? Why will this resonate?
Who made the decision in our last 10 wins? How did we get in the door in those situations?
Let's review our current lead generation programs.

What are they?
Who do the target?
What do they cost?
How successful are they?

How do we leverage referrals?
What type of networking do we promote?
How many new meetings do we need to book every week per rep?
What is the sales rep's responsibility in lead generation?

After reviewing the answers, how comfortable are you with your company's ability to consistently get in front of your target buyer?

Sales Call Execution

Many competitive sales situations are won by the team that is most prepared and professional. Akina defines sales call execution as the ability to prepare for, run, and follow up sales calls. Many sales people today have not had the benefit of a formal, structured sales training program such as the programs run by Xerox in the 1970s and 1980s. Your sales team is your company's front line – are your sure they are presenting the best image of your company?

Ask your team the following questions:

What preparation methodology do we require from our sales team?
Do we have a standard way we plan, set up and execute sales calls?
Do we have a standard company overview presentation?
Do we have a list of “discovery questions” that our sales people use to gather information and qualify opportunities?
Do we document and share the highlights of each meeting with our prospects / customers?
Do we role-play situations with our sales people to make sure they are prepared to represent our company?

If you have ever been embarrassed by a sales persons performance on a sales call, you probably have issues with sales call execution.

Qualification, Pursuit, and Closing

Improving your team's ability to qualify, pursue and close will positively effect sales cycle time, close ratio, cost of sales, and enhance pipeline visibility and accuracy.

How do you detect issues in this stage?

Do we have a documented sales approach that includes steps, roles, and communication?
How familiar is the revenue team with this approach? Is it enforced?
Do we have documented qualification criteria?
How do we define “good fits” and “bad fits”? How do we decide to mobilize and pursue and opportunity?
How do we input and manage deals in our pipeline report? Do we close more than 50% of deals we term “ready to close”?

To effectively manage a company today, you must develop a competency at this stage. Have poor forecasting information has put many companies in serious financial straights. Once the revenue team decides to pursue a deal, you should feel confident that 1) they are pursuing a deal that can be won and 2) they have the skill to close it in a timely, cost effective manner.

Account Management and Penetration

Many companies place great emphasis on “hunting” new accounts and virtually ignore their install base. Existing accounts are not only a new revenue opportunity but can also be a great source of leads (referrals).

Diagnosing issues in account management and penetration is a fairly straightforward process:

Do we forecast revenue from our existing account base? How are we doing compared to our forecast?
In the past year, how many new opportunities have we closed in our existing account base?
What is our formal strategic account planning / management process?
How would you rate our relationship with our most strategic customers? Have we exceeded expectations?
How many CEO-to-CEO meetings have we had in the last three months?
How many leads (referrals) have we gotten from our installed base I the last twelve months?

Sales Infrastructure

Akina defines sales infrastructure as the organization, systems, and behaviors utilized to guide the revenue team and sales process. This component is an overlay to the five previous components.

An integrated sales approach definitely needs a well thought out infrastructure. How would your team define?

Describe your revenue organization? (Roles, individual missions / ownership, and skills needed). How will organization grow over the next twelve months? Do we have a career path defined?
How much coaching do we do at every level of the organization?
What systems have we deployed that track leads and opportunities, forecast revenue, calculate compensation, share knowledge, and measure the effectiveness of various initiatives and general health of our business?
Have we defined our “way”? Do we have a well-understood and followed set of values, behaviors and expectations?

Map your learning's across the entire sales approach. Where do you have gaps?

What's next?

Diagnosing the real problems is only the beginning of the process. Improving one or more of the components takes focus, time and resources. Ask yourself who is the best person in my organization to solve this particular problem – then give them ownership to solve it.

By following a structured approach to diagnosing your revenue issues, we hope you develop information that will help you make better decisions. You will probably discover your problems won't be solved just by firing people – you will need a coordinated and multi-faceted effort in order to achieve visible, consistent improvement.

Back to : Diagnosing Your Revenue Generation Issues

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