Three Reasons Sales May be Failing- And What To Do

Three Reasons Sales May be Failing- And What To Do

by | Nov 21, 2024 | Sales, Strategy

Failing at sales can be highly frustrating for entrepreneurs. You have happy clients; you deliver products and services well, but sales come up short no matter what you try.

This blog provides a framework to help you understand why sales may not be meeting your expectations.  Three reasons that sales may be failing are:

  • The sales leader is not equipped to coach
  • There aren’t any processes and tools to coach to
  • You have uncoachable sales reps

The Sales Leader is Not Equipped to Coach

The Problem: 

Being a great football player does not make you a great coach; being a great salesperson does not make you a good sales leader. Coaching requires a different skill set: inspiring, guiding, and developing individuals to perform at their best.

We recently worked with a business that elevated their highest performing sales rep (lets call her Jen) to the sales leadership seat. We see this a lot, so this is nothing new!  Here is what happened:

  1. Jen was promoted from her territory to the sales seat to replace the Visionary who was managing the sales team, and she proudly accepted.
  2. Jen began participating in sales calls with her reps, many times taking the lead at the beginning of sales cycles.  The sales team was impressed at how good Jen was in front of their prospects.
  3. After 6 months, the leadership team reflected on the scorecard, and despite the new sales leader being in place, sales numbers went down, and they wanted to know why!

Here is what they realized:

  • Jen’s previous territory now has a new rep in it, so the territory that previously drove the most revenue was at the bottom of the stack list.
  • While Jen was impressive on the initial call and helped some reps close some big deals, many of the other deals were stalling because Jen did not have the bandwidth to drive them to closure.
  • While reps were initially impressed with Jen, their performance was not improving, so they grew frustrated.
  • In addition, the cost of sales was higher because the sales leadership seat created a new overhead expense.

Sales reps elevated to leadership positions who are great “closers.” Many often focus on closing business at the expense of developing their reps to be better performers. There absolutely comes a time for a sales leader to focus on closing the “whales,” but, as a rule, elevating and developing the entire sales team is significantly more impactful to the business in the long term than having a sales leader focus on closing. 

The Solution:

The best way to solve this may be to consider keeping the sales superstar in a sales seat where they can make more money and continue to drive revenue for the business. Look at hiring or someone better equipped to make the whole team better. That person might already be on your sales team.  Hint: he/she might not be the top performer!

Regardless of who is in the sales leadership seat, it is highly recommended to invest in leadership development, with a focus on coaching. Books like Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore can provide a solid foundation, but practical, ongoing training is essential. The GROW Coaching model is detailed in that book. 

Consider bringing in external coaching experts or enrolling your sales leaders in programs that teach and coach them how to listen, ask insightful questions, and provide constructive feedback. 

Download the G.R.O.W. Coaching Guide

No Processes and Tools To Coach To

The Problem:

Revisiting the football analogy, coaching without processes and tools is like a football coach without a playbook and a practice schedule. Even the best football coach in the world could only coach effectively with a game plan and a framework to prepare for games.

Nutshell research shows that Organizations that adopt a structured sales process experience a 15% boost in sales performance compared to those lacking such a process. Some symptoms that you may be seeing in your business if you do not have processes in place are:

  • Low close rates 
  • No metrics to support needed business decisions
  • Poor pipeline visibility results in unpredictable sales team performance, making business planning difficult
  • Challenges onboarding reps
  • High sales turnover
  • Very long time to performance for new reps
  • Reliance on “whales.” These are the big deals that might sustain your business because you don’t have a steady stream of smaller, more reliable deals with less variance.
  • Tenured reps not continuously getting better
  • Dissatisfied clients, specifically in the onboarding phase
  • Sales team wasting time 

Smaller sales organizations can achieve success without process for a time, but these challenges are magnified with each sales hire and scaling is nearly impossible.

The Solution:

A structured, consistent sales process drives predictable sales performance, making business planning much easier. So, implement processes!  If they exist, then use and evolve them! Two processes that are needed for effective coaching are:

  • Sales Process – A consistent, repeatable sales process designed to guide your clients through their buying process. This process should be crafted to align with how your specific clients prefer to buy. The process should be optimized in a CRM and include tools like checklists to enable coaching and maximize closure rates. 
  • Sales Management Process – A consistent, structured approach to planning, executing, and optimizing the business’s sales efforts is also needed. Ideally, this process aligns with the company’s goals and EOS™ or any other business operating system that the company uses.

Uncoachable Sales Reps

The Problem:

Not every sales rep is open to coaching.  For whatever reason, sales reps are typically less open to coaching than teammates in other parts of the business. Ego, complacency, or a lack of trust in leadership are possible root causes.

If you have any reps on your sales team who resist feedback, think they know everything, consistently demonstrate a negative attitude, or don’t improve, there is a good chance it might be time to cut bait.

The Solution: 

In the end, an uncoachable rep is, well, uncoachable. So, save yourself some time and money and do what it takes to find that out. Assess your sales team and ensure they are coachable.

Better yet, take the next step with the assessment and ensure they have the aptitude for their sales role (SDR, BDR, Account Manager, etc). Many assessments can also help you develop a development plan to help the rep continue improving. Add this to your Sales Management Process!

Connect with us about Assessing Your Sales Team.

Conclusion

Now you have an actionable, DIY framework to determine why your sales might fall short. You can always go it alone, but when it comes to sales, might it be a better idea to accelerate sales growth by asking for help from the experts?

Setting SMART Sales Rocks

Setting SMART Sales Rocks

by | Sep 27, 2024 | Sales, Strategy

A lot has been written about making Rocks SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), but I have yet to see it applied to the added context of the Sales Department. This blog was written to add this context in order to help sales departments set better rocks and sell more stuff!

Before we dive in, for the purposes of this blog, it helps to understand these different types of rocks by differentiating a couple of types of rocks that I see in sales:

  • Building Rocks – Rocks that require the building of processes that likely result in new activity metrics
  • Performing Rocks – Leveraging current processes to drive existing metrics

Building Rocks are about implementing new structures or processes, and performance Rocks are part of the normal “day job” of the sales or revenue team. I am not a huge fan of performance rocks, but there is a place for them.  More on that later!

Also, some use the “R” as “Realistic,” but from my perspective, “Realistic” and “Achievable” are the same, so I go with “Relevant!”

Specific

The “S” component of SMART rocks is for “Specific,” which is pretty simple.  A “Specific” Rock is crystal clear. In short: What needs to be accomplished? Who owns the Rock? When will it be complete? 

When it comes to sales, one thing to consider is that the Rock may be cross-functional, so it is important that the right person owns the Rock.  For example, most B2B businesses get leads through both sales and marketing. If implementing processes to get more leads is a Rock, the marketing person may not be the best person to own the Rock as the Revenue Leader may have a more comprehensive perspective.  At a minimum, sales and marketing might be involved in building the Rock.

Examples of Specific Sales Rocks:

  • Example 1- “Implement a process to reduce the average deal close time from 45 days to 35 days by the end of Q4, owned by the head of sales operations.”
  • Example 2- “Generate 50 new Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) from the Northeast region by the end of Q4, owned by the CRO.”

Summary of Key Sales Considerations:

  • Is it a cross-functional Rock that needs members of both sales and marketing?
  • Are there key milestones to hit along the way?

Measurable

Rocks should always be measurable to ensure that the rock is focused on impact and that the success of the work done on the rock can be determined.

Sales is a very metric-heavy part of the business. While “measuring” Rocks in other departments might be binary (yes/no) from a completion perspective, try to avoid this when it comes to Sales Rocks so that there are measurable results from the Rock being complete.

Your Rock should target impacting the highest level (lagging or leading) metric on your scorecard to be impacted by the work on the Rock. Another way to think about this is to ensure that the metric the Rock targets is the lowest metric in the funnel that will be impacted. For context, here is an example of relatively standard metrics in the funnel for a generic sales process:

  • # of MQL leads
  • MQL>SQL conversion rates.
  • SQL>Discover Conversion Rates
  • Discover>Proposal Conversion rates
  • Proposal win rates

These metrics are likely macro metrics to be tracked monthly or quarterly instead of activity metrics.  Also, consider what outcome you are looking for. I have seen organizations have # of leads as a Rock when they really want more Sales-Qualified Leads (SQLs). 

Here is a contrast of two different Rocks:

  • Rock 1 
    • Owner: Marketing Leader
    • Rock: Increase the # of leads
  • Rock 2
    • Owner: Revenue/Sales Leader
    • Rock: Increase # of SQLs

These two Rocks would likely look different.  Which one would work for you?

Summary of Key Sales Considerations:

  • What is the highest-level leading/lagging metric (closest to the bottom of the funnel) you can use to measure the success of this Rock long-term by using trends in the monthly or quarterly scorecard?
  • How can you ensure it’s more than a “yes/no” completion check?

Achievable

Your Rocks should stretch your team but remain realistic. Take stock of your resources and ask whether the goal is truly attainable. 

For “Performance Rocks,” given the current processes in place now, consider if the Rock is realistic. For example, if your team is closing 50 deals per quarter, it’s unlikely they’ll jump to 100 overnight. An achievable Rock might be “Close 60 deals by the end of the quarter.”

Another consideration with that example is if you ask for better results than you usually expect from the team, what gives? Will it come at the expense of driving another metric?  If so, that might be part of the plan for the Rock.  If not, then why aren’t the better results expected each quarter? 

For “Building Rocks,” does the Rock owner and their team have the capacity to build?  Sales is different from other departments in the business because the sales team is directly connected to generating revenue. So, work on Sales Rocks should be reserved for roles in the sales organization that are non-quota bearing, as they take time away from sales reps revenue-generating activities.  

Summary of Key Sales Considerations:

  • Does this Rock elevate the expectations of your sales team? If so, why isn’t this always expected? What other metrics may be negatively impacted?
  • Given sales quotas, is there bandwidth on the team to own and complete this Rock?

Relevant

Rocks need to be relevant to your company’s vision and longer-term goals. Each Rock should tie directly into a larger goal—ideally, one of the Measurables on the 3-Year Picture on your Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO™). For example, if your company’s goal is to increase market share in a specific region, a sales Rock might focus on acquiring new customers in that region.

Depending on your business, another test of relevancy is to ensure that you keep in mind the perspective of your Target Market or Ideal Client. For example, if there is a desire for the sales team to generate leads, are all leads treated equally, or might it be a good idea to target the Rock around getting ideal client leads? 

Examples of Relevant Sales Rocks:

  • If your company’s lagging metric is revenue growth, a relevant Rock for a business that is shifting focus to healthcare might be “Generate $500K in new revenue from the healthcare sector by Q4.”
  • If improving customer retention is a company-wide focus, a sales Rock might be “Increase customer renewal rates by 5% by the end of the quarter.”

Summary of Key Sales Considerations:

  • Does this Rock support a Measurable on the 3-Year Picture on your Leadership V/TO™?
  • Does it align with the overall business vision?
  • Is your Ideal Client considered in the context of the Rock?

Time Bound

The Rock should have a clear deadline or timeframe. Per EOS™, this will typically be the end of the quarter when you get together to plan out your next quarter. Every Rock needs a deadline, but it’s also important to consider how long it will take to build and implement it. 

Sales Rocks often require infrastructure or systems that take time to build and implement, while the results may come later. Keep this in mind when setting timelines and expectations by considering how long it will take to build and implement the Rock and how long it will take for results to be realized.

One approach to this is for the Rock to be built this quarter, which will have a goal to affect a metric in 3 or 6 months.

Examples of Time-Bound Sales Rocks:

  • “Implement a process in Q2 that will result in $200,000 of additional recurring revenue by the end of Q4.”
  • “Complete 100 sales calls by October 31st, with weekly targets to track progress.”

Summary of Key Sales Considerations:

  • What is the deadline for completing this Rock?
  • When should the goal for results realistically be set for?
  • Have you accounted for the time it takes to build and implement the solution?

Conclusion

Setting the right sales Rocks can transform your business. By making them SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound – you ensure your team focuses on the right goals, tracking progress, and aligned with the company’s long-term vision. As you plan your next quarter, apply the concepts in this blog to set and crush your Rocks!

5 Ways to use your Proven Process To Drive Sales

5 Ways to use your Proven Process To Drive Sales

by | Aug 5, 2024 | Sales

The Proven Process tool (aka Client Journey, or Client Experience) is an under-utilized tool. As many have said, the Proven Process is the “Front Stage.” These are the stages that your clients navigate with your business to maximize the value they will realize. 

For differentiation, on the other side of the coin, the “Back Stage” is where you find your Core Processes, which are the internal processes in place to ensure your client seamlessly navigates their journey across your Proven Process. Especially for services-minded businesses, the Proven Process can be the most tangible tool to communicate how your clients will maximize the value delivered.

The Proven Process is a phenomenal sales tool. Here are 5 ways you can use your Proven Process to drive more sales:

  • Validate your Proven Process
  • Align around your Proven Process
  • Use your Proven Process
  • Measure your Proven Process
  • Improve your Proven Process.

Below is some insight on all 5 of these.

Validate Your Proven Process

When was the last time you asked your IDEAL prospects and clients how they felt as they navigated their experience with your business? Gathering external feedback ensures you are focused in the right areas when assessing needs and communicating value in your proposals.  This improves close rates for Ideal Prospects. 

Here are some ways to validate your Proven Process:

  • Engage a third party to talk with your clients. At worst, you will confirm what you think you now know.  But you will likely be surprised by what you learn!
  • Send surveys to clients to gather their feedback on different stages of the proven process as appropriate. 
  • For businesses with very high customer lifetime value, a focus group can provide a lot of collective insight that you can use to improve delivery of services

Align Around the Proven Process

Your business should be aligned around your Proven Process from your client’s perspective. If all team members have this foundation, then all understand their role in ensuring that prospects and clients have a great experience. When team members understand what prospects and clients have done and will be doing as their journey transitions from department to department, it is extremely helpful to prospects, clients, and your team.

Here are some ideas to align around your Proven Process:

  • Create a brand around it and launch it internally. Hang posters on the wall, including it in prospect/client-facing communications.  
  • Use your proven process to add context to any prospect/client-facing processes (sales, marketing, client delivery).
  • Ensure the handoff from marketing is a seamless process, over-communicating and leveraging video so clients know where they are in your process and what is next.
  • Set the client delivery team up for success by getting them what they need to deliver excellent service.  

Use Your Proven Process!

A lot of proven processes are created at the launch of EOS and then decay on the V/TO.  Don’t let this happen to you! 

Here’s how to use it:

  • Use it to communicate the path to value throughout the Sales Process.  Prospects and clients enjoy clarity, and showing them where they are on a visual level can be extremely helpful. 
  • Closing tool – map how your client’s compelling event aligns with your proven process to ensure they know what is involved in them getting where they need to go.
  • Qualifying tool – if a prospect doesn’t seem to fit with your proven process, then it may not be a good client.

Measure Your Proven Process

Most scorecards consist primarily of internal KPIs and metrics that do not measure how your clients navigate your business. Adding proven process KPIs to your scorecard helps you understand where to improve. These KPIs are not likely weekly scorecard metrics but are impactful to reflect back on a quarterly or monthly basis. 

Here are some ideas to measure your Proven Process:

  • Lots of stages are cross-functional. Measure all stages on your Leadership Scorecard and carry down the metrics that each department affects.
  • Measure conversion rates. This is the percentage of prospects or clients who move to the next stage of the Proven Process. This idea might not apply to all stages, but it works for many of them. 
  • Measure your clients’ satisfaction. Understanding your client’s perspective on how they felt provides immediate actionable insight. Stages like onboarding are great opportunities to send clients a short survey to rate their experience and gather subjective feedback.
  • Measure time in stages of the Proven Process where possible. This can have financial and client satisfaction implications.  Measuring the time spent in a stage like onboarding allows you to improve internal processes to streamline the process and help your clients achieve results quicker.

Improve Your Proven Process

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Winston Churchill

Once your Proven Process is implemented and you are measuring it, get it into a continuous improvement cycle! 

Here are some ideas on improvement:

  • Put it on your quarterly agenda to reflect back on metrics, pick a stage that needs to be improved, and set a cross-functional rock to improve it.
  • Improve it in your normal Traction meeting cadence. Some insight gathered presents opportunities for immediate action and improvement.  For example, a client survey might include a suggestion for something that can be improved with ease.

Download our Proven Process Checklist for more info.

CRM Benefits for the Whole Organization

CRM Benefits for the Whole Organization

by | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales

Not all that long ago, the decision to implement a CRM involved huge trade-offs. A CRM that was very functional from a sales standpoint had very limited functionality for the operations/customer service team. Customer service applications lacked sales functionality. Marketing automation applications were stand-alone and did not inherently integrate with the CRM.

There will always be trade-offs when making decisions, but CRMs have significantly evolved to enable functionality for the whole organization. As you might imagine, the benefits for each department are different.   

Let’s dig into each department and look at some of the benefits that modern CRM offers today’s business.

Sales

The CRM benefits for sales make it a lot easier to convince the sales team to make a CRM change than it used to be!

  • Improved win/lead conversion rates – That’s the big idea, right?
  • Team productivity – Automation like templated content enables you to make more touches in less time while controlling the message.
  • Accurate Forecasting – When configured and used correctly, forecasting is simple!
  • Rep Development- Reporting of the right metrics helps leaders take the right actions to develop individual reps.

Marketing

There was a time when marketing folks used to buy their own technology.  Those days are gone:

  • Improved lead flow – Segmentation allows you to hone and improve your message, and downstream, closed-loop reporting helps marketers know which tactics and messages are turning prospects into clients.
  • ROI – Closed-loop reporting enables attribution to help with this age-old challenge
  • Share of wallet – Marketing has always marketed to prospects. Managing clients in the same system allows you to market to your clients as well.

Client Success

Stand-alone client/customer success teams limited the visibility of the sales and marketing touchpoints of the prospect journey. No longer!:

  • Customer/Client Sat – Having a 360-degree view of the client puts actionable insight in front of your Customer Success team.
  • Productivity – Enhanced communication channels and built-in automation enable you to meet customers where they are and provide the correct response.

Admin/Finance

Integration and inherent back office functionality have recently brought admin and finance to the CRM party. How do they stand to gain?

  • Billing/payment integrations and streamlined processes – Many CRMs go beyond the proposal and integrate contracting into the CRM.
  • Billing accuracy – Automation reduces errors!
  • View of history – Visibility marketing, sales, and client success interactions help support your AR team.

IT

 Not only do IT teams support CRMs they also provide functionality to them.

  • Departmental productivity/costs – Most CRMs reduce administrative reliance. Much of the admin is enabled at the departmental level by the users that know what they need, reducing the burden on IT.
  • Security – New CRMs need to provide levels of security that were not previously imagined in old CRMs.
  • Integration – New CRMs need less integration because of their Improved functionality. When integration is needed, new CRMs provide a lot more flexibility.
  • Mobile enablement – Today’s mobile workforce enables IT to give users the access that they need on the go.

Leadership

A fully functional CRM is a huge asset from a strategic perspective:

  • Business planning – When the CRM is humming, it is much easier to gauge future performance and to support strategic decision making.
  • Cross-functional Alignment – When departments use different applications, there is less of a need to be aligned. However, that also increased the need for someone to pull everything together. A fully functional CRM promotes cross-functional alignment.

Conclusion

The evolution of CRMs has been a massive enabler to the success of a business that properly takes advantage of the opportunity. That said, the decision for the right CRM is more complex.  

Ensuring that all departments are engaged when shaping your CRM requirements is imperative. When done correctly, implementing the right CRM can be a substantial competitive advantage, improving communications, streamlining processes, enabling data-driven decision-making, and enhancing customer experiences.
Continue to read more about CRMS:

Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.

#ModernCRM #EmpowerYourOrganization #DriveSuccess #DataDrivenDecisions #StreamlineProcesses #CrossDepartmentalEngagement #Convergo

3 Reasons Your Sales May Be Flat

3 Reasons Your Sales May Be Flat

by | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales

Unlocking Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Overcoming Sales Barriers

Sales is a barrier to growth for a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Understanding how to break through that barrier can be very challenging. How can you do it? Some common thoughts that go through your mind might be:

  • Do I have the right people in place? 
  • Are we taking the right approach? 
  • Do I need to document my processes?
  • Do I need to improve my scorecard?

Many of these things can be helpful, but acting on these questions may lead you down the wrong road because you may not be addressing the root cause of the problem. Many times, the challenges are more foundational.

Three questions you should ask yourself before acting on one of those questions are:

  • Do I clearly understand my ideal client and the outcomes they want from their business?
  • Are my uniques/differentiators/value proposition aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
  • Is the path to realizing our value clear for my ideal clients?

Let’s explore these questions in more depth so that you can have a better understanding of what the root cause of your challenge might be.

Do I have a clear understanding of what my Ideal Clients want?

If your ideal client profile is too broad, it can weaken your message and make it challenging to reach your entire market. Honing your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has two huge benefits:

  1. It strengthens your message – a tighter ICP makes it easier to create a message that resonates.
  2. It allows you to be more effective with your limited sales and marketing budget – simply stated, investing the same amount on a smaller pool of more qualified prospects that your business is more optimized to serve yields better results.

Your ICP should include the high-level outcomes that Ideal Clients want from their business. This helps you align your offerings and also create messaging that hits the mark.

Are my differentiators/uniques aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?

The ideal state is that you have some uniques or differentiators that directly align with your Ideal Clients’ desired outcomes. In its purest sense, if you uniquely position your services to satisfy your ideal clients’ desired outcomes, sales, and marketing can be like shooting fish in a barrel.

This is a lot harder in businesses that operate in a competitive market. The EOS™ 3 Uniques concept states that, while some companies might share a unique or two, the ideal state is that no other business offers all three. 

If you are in a market that is challenging to differentiate, then clearly connecting your services to your Ideal Client’s desired outcomes might be the best thing you can do to differentiate.

Is the path to value clear for my ideal clients?

The path to value has a lot of interchangeable terms:

  • Client Journey
  • Proven Process in the EOS world
  • Client Experience

Regardless of what you call it, the keys to leveraging the concept to win more are the same:

  • Tightly integrate your uniques into the journey
  • Make it clear how your Ideal Clients navigate their path to value
  • Brand your Client Journey and use it as a tool to connect with your Ideal Clients

As Donald Miller says, “… if you confuse, you lose.” Clearly communicating your Ideal Client’s path to value will not only help you speak to prospects and clients, it will also help you align your team to deliver the journey that you desire.

Conclusion

This should help you better understand the root cause of your barrier to sales. If you are able to resolve these questions with good answers, then the next step is to look at your systems and people and build your growth assets.

Read more on how to identify your ideal client profile.
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.

#entrepreneurialbusiness #salesbarriers #idealclient