Creating High-Performance Sales Teams a Playbook for Success
Introduction
A process oriented and scalable revenue generating process is the “lifeline” of all service companies, as such having a high-performance sales team is critical to increasing shareholder value while providing a lower cost of customer acquisition. It comes as no surprise then that scaling and creating a high performance and productive sales organization is one of the most difficult issues for Founders & CEO Entrepreneurs to solve.
Since our inception in 2002 we have partnered with 32 client companies and investments on the growth and development of their service business models. Over those 17+ years we have accomplished a lot, learned a lot and would like to share with you a high-level Playbook on the proven and critical components required for highly productive and effective sales organizations. One of the keys to the many years of Tablero’s success, has been our holistic approach to developing successful and wealth creation business models. Creating and implementing a high productive sales team is no different, therefore CEOs need to take a step back and perceive sales through a holistic lens, carefully studying and implementing the components of the Playbook we present below.
This Playbook for Sales Success includes 8 components we have identified as core to creating and implementing a high-performance sales process. Please keep in mind, and again to reiterate our holistic approach, while this Playbook is focused on sales execution, a comprehensive holistic go-to-market strategy also necessitates integrated and effective marketing (to drive brand awareness, lead generation, and sales enablement), product management, customer lifecycle management and satisfaction.
The 8 Critical Components to Create a High-Performance Sales Team
1. DEVELOPING A CUSTOMER & PROSPECT DATABASE:
Develop a comprehensive list of all existing customers and high potential prospects in the market that includes key variables that may be used in account prioritization and targeting, some of which may not be directly available in the public domain. Therefore it is the ongoing role of Marketing to expand and enhance the company’s “High Potential Prospect List”, through marketing lead generation programs etc.
2. POTENTIAL CLIENT/ACCOUNT TARGETING:
Leverage knowledge within your company and review historical drivers of sales wins to determine what variables support success within your sales organization. What are the demographic attributes, psychographic attributes, and other attributes of the highest probability of success buyer? Who are the buyers in the target company? Who are the influencer’s in the buying community? Weighting these attributes and prioritizing them is critical to having the “highest probability of sales success”, as the company deploys the very expensive direct sales professionals.
3. SALES PLAYBOOK: PROCESS & STRATEGIES:
Establish a sales process Playbook for your sales and business development professionals to codify the messaging, approach to different customer segments, objections handling, competitive dynamics, and coordination with the other functions and resources within the company, as well as general sales, operational management activities and measurements.
4. SALES MARKET COVERAGE DESIGN & EXECUTION:
Design territories that segment the market appropriately for the market opportunity attributes, align sales professionals to specific initiatives and strategies and approaches most common to each territory. It is important to note that territories, while often purely geographic, need not be one-dimensional: market complexities, different segmentation strategies: could lead to other market coverage approaches. That need to be customized for the specific market dynamics.
5. MULTI –TIERED SALES COMPENSATION PLAN:
Establish a compensation plan that is competitive, incentivizes the right behaviors, rewards increased productivity and efficiency, and aligns with the predictability / timeline of your company’s bookings to revenue conversion, or other sales cycles duration attributes.
Best of Breed incentive plans are tiered with compensation that accelerates upon achievement of “Star Performance”. Likewise, all reward and incentive plans must be paid “close in timing to the successful activity”
6. HIRING & RECRUITING EFFECTIVENESS:
Define the “highest probability of success” sales professional profile that focuses on the company’s Playbook and Sale Process, industry experience, and aligns with the attributes of the buyer community. Utilize professional and experienced recruiters for candidate flow, screening, credentialing etc. before utilizing your precious time in the recruiting process. Ensure you have a strict set of interviewing criteria that emphasizes prior sales professional success vs. quota at companies with similar deal sizes, sales cycles, and buyer and “buyer community” attributes and dynamics.
7. TRAINING: ONGOING TRAINING:
Develop sales training programs for initial onboarding of new recruits as well as ongoing training that focuses on the Sales Playbook and process, value proposition/product competency, relative value delivered to clients, how to be consultative, and familiarity with the target clients attributes, business model components and financials.
The training should be curriculum and competency/performance based and should be earned not a entitled right of the sales professional.
8. SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT:
Establish a regular cadence of performance management meetings with the sales leader vs. broader team meetings, leverage a data-driven sales scorecard (highlighting individual performance, pipeline health, sales activities, territory coverage), and clearly define future action plans for the next meeting to create custom coaching for each sales professional. Ephor states that for organizations that desire “best of breed” growth, it is imperative that a sales operational management function (SOM function) and professional are a core competency of the company. This SOM function is critical to create and establish a “Performance and Accountability based Sales Culture”.
Conclusion
At Tablero over our nearly 2 decades of advising, developing, advising and investing in CEO Entrepreneur services business models, we quite proud that over 20 of our clients and investments have been recognized by INC Magazine (or other publications) as “Fast Growth” organizations.
Within our Organizational Clarity holistic approach, the area of Sales Performance has always been a core competency and “hallmark” of the Tablero Group.
This Playbook and associated 8 Components of High-Performance Sales teams has proven to be most successful in service and outsourcing organizations that have a revenue size from $5m – $50m and have desires to execute upon annual revenue growth rates in excess of 20%.
In Summary: to reiterate the above Playbook to Create High Performance Sales Team is a high-level guidance document designed to get you the CEO Entrepreneur to think through how you can apply these concepts and customize them to the specific needs of your business model and business growth objectives.