On-demand webinar
You don't have a sales problem. You have a sales systems problem.
What you’ll learn :
- Why most companies don't have a sales problem, they have a sales systems problem
- FOCUS, or "follow one course until successful": narrowing eight or ten target markets down to one
- The three-part positioning statement that gets a prospect to say "tell me more"
- Why jumping from the first meeting to a pitch kills value, and how a gated, milestone sales process fixes it
What's covered
Inside the session. Watch a clip, then get the full recording.
The uncertainty is global and outside your control. How sales ready you are is not. When markets contract, winning market share is the way to grow the top line.
A client had systemised every part of the business except sales and had stalled for two years. After fixing the gaps it grew 38% in the first year and 42% in the second. Plus a poll on the audience's biggest growth challenge.
Sales success equals clarity times activity times effectiveness. Why training your people is not the first fix: you cannot blame them when there is no solid sales process to follow.
A 98-page sales plan cannot scale. The engineering firm narrowed from eight or ten target markets to one: large mining companies with fleets of mobile plant and drill rigs, where downtime hurts most.
SalesStar's definition of consultative selling is the enhancement of client profits. Then the three-part positioning statement, and how it moved the firm's conversations from procurement to mining managers.
Forecasts built on individual heroics, founders who cannot step away, and new hires left to guess. Most of the audience said they have no documented process. Two studies put the gain from a well-built one at 15 to 19%.
The softball diamond: first meeting, deep discovery, solution, close. Skipping discovery is "show up and throw up". Stage probabilities, sales velocity, KPIs and qualifying gates are what make a forecast real.
Keeping a process simple enough to follow, finding the problems you solve in freight forwarding (late, damaged and lost freight), and why a common process does not turn salespeople into robots.
Resources
Get the recording
Frequently asked questions
Common Questions
Paul's view is that most companies don't have a sales problem, they have a sales systems problem. The engineering firm in the session had systemised every part of its business except sales, and had been stuck at around $20 million for two years. Once the gaps in its sales system were fixed, it grew 38% in the first year and 42% in the second.
Not on its own. When the engineering firm asked SalesStar to train its underperformers, the first question back was about their sales process, and they did not have one. The session argues you need the foundation of a sales plan and a sales process before skills development pays off.
Three parts: name your target audience, name the emotion, and name the overarching problem. Paul's example from the GFC was "We work with CEOs who are concerned about how the current economy is impacting sales." The acid test is whether the prospect says "tell me more".
SalesStar defines it as the enhancement of client profits, which you do by helping a client increase revenue, contain costs, or both. That means asking where the company is going, where its bottlenecks are, and what happens if it does nothing, rather than leading with features and benefits. Paul says this can improve conversion ratios by up to 50%.
Alex cites two studies putting the uplift from a well-built sales process at 15 to 19%. Paul adds that the gain depends on managers training, coaching and holding people to it, and that research SalesStar did about five years ago found 90% of organisations had no well-documented process. In the engineering firm, two new salespeople ramped up in under three months instead of the 12 to 18 months people expect.
No. Salespeople keep their own personality and flair, but follow the same rules of the game: the same target customer, the right questions, how to handle pushback and how to sell on value. Paul describes a home builder with over a hundred salespeople that agreed one common way to sell and has outgrown its market for the last ten years.
The next step
Stop running on heroics. Start engineering revenue.
Whichever way you work with us, the same proven Revenue OS runs underneath. Book a growth session and we’ll show you where to start.