Friday Funnel Focus by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions
In past articles we discussed various challenges that many small business owners face:
- Their business gets stuck on a plateau
- They started their business with some skill or expertise. Between that skill or expertise, their passion and desire to pay the bills; they grew their business to a certain level, but they seem to get stuck. They struggle to break through that plateau.
- Some need CFO help, others need Sales Management help and many need both.
- They struggle to hire and keep their first SUCCESSFUL salesperson
- We frequently ask small business owners how many A,B,C and D salespeople they hired for their small business
- Here are the statistics to date:
- “D” non-players - over 50%.
- ”C” Players - about 20%
- “B” Players - about 20%
- “A” Players - less than 10%
- What do your statistics look like? (Will you please send me a note to david@epochsalesmanagement.com? )
If small business owners struggle so much with hiring and keeping SUCCESSFUL salespeople, no wonder they get stuck on a plateau, fair?
How can making your business more sales team ready help you hire and keep more successful salespeople to scale your team beyond yourself?
- It can help attract more “A” players to your team
It’s a challenge for small business owners to compete with the deeper pockets of larger corporations to attract “A” players, but what if you can truly offer a competitive On-target earnings due to higher realized commissions for true “A” players?
When your business is “Sales Team Ready”, “A” players can see the potential to make the money they want to make without the headaches of Corporate America that you left to start your business.
- It can help you develop more “B” Players into “A” Players
Not all “A” players are born “A” players. They started somewhere. Be on the lookout for those future “A” players and let your business be the one that helps develop them into an “A” player. Continue to treat them right and take care of them so you can keep that new “A” player.
When your business is “Sales Team Ready”, the right “B” players can grow into that “A” player you are looking for.
What makes your business Sales Team Ready?
Our experience shows that small business owners that chose to own the sales function and make their business sales team ready, are more likely to have “A” salesplayers and break through plateaus as they scale their business.
Here are the key elements of a program to Make Your Business .. Sales Team Ready.
Get the Sales Strategy Right i.e. Focus on the Right Things
There are five foundational things to ensure your sales team does well.
- Get the Messaging Right
- Align the Sales Strategy from Business Results Goals to Sales Activity Metrics
- Get the Targeting Right
- Measure what Matters
- Build a New Business Development Culture
In our Make Your Business .. Sales Team Ready Program we support small business owners as they achieve each of these items.
First step is to identify what problem your business solves that people are willing to pay money for and develop an internal “Why You Exist Story”. We also guide them as they select one or more successful messaging frameworks on the market to help them improve one to one sales messaging and one to many marketing messaging.
Second, you want to align your sales strategy from business results goals to selling objectives to sales activity metrics to get everyone on the same page.
Third, build effective target lists with the right Ideal Client Profiles. For small businesses, the list is the strategy.
Next, build dashboards to measure the right sales results, health of the pipeline and sales activities to track progress. One key measurement for new business development is “New Opportunities”.
Last, build a new business development culture by identifying the right priorities and continuously reinforcing them.
Get These Two Sales Processes Right
- Build a Healthy Sales Pipeline
- Win More Deals
To build a Healthy Sales Pipeline, we encourage you to develop toolkits/playbooks for 4 New Opportunity Process Buckets.
- Grow Existing Clients
- Starting with finding ways to cross sell and upsell business with your existing clients is the low hanging fruit of creating new opportunities.
- Intentional Networking/ Referrals
- The next most fertile ground is through introductions from your clients and network. Be intentional about how you exchange referrals with your clients and exchange introductions with your Strategic Centers of Influence and selected 1st connections that are connected to your 2nd connection prospects.
- Intentional Marketing
- While it takes a while to develop, it is important to build an intentional marketing program that increases engaged contacts, leading to future inbound leads.
- Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel Targeted Sales Outreach
- A disciplined outreach program helps with each of the 3 buckets above as well as reaching out to highly targeted prospects.
- A disciplined outreach program helps with each of the 3 buckets above as well as reaching out to highly targeted prospects.
To Win More Deals, we encourage you to build toolkits/playbooks to Win More Deals in three stages of the Sales Process.
- Prepare/Open Sales the Call
- Discovery and Qualification
- Present, Propose and Close
In our Make Your Business ... Sales Team Ready Program we support small business owners as they achieve each of these items.
It starts with preparation. This includes establishing clear objectives, understanding your prospect, preparing your questioning strategy and knowing what part of your solution to be prepared to present. Throughout the process you want to build and establish rapport with your prospect, paying close attention to personality type, communication style, and communication type. Keys to successfully opening a sales call are breaking preoccupation, connecting with the prospect, building credibility and positioning for discovery and qualification.
A good discovery and qualification process can make your “presentation and proposal” process more like a “take-home” test. Try asking questions in these four areas as you qualify your prospect:
- Current Situation Questions
- Where are they today?
- Desired State/ Future Vision Questions
- Where do they want to go?
- Problems/Obstacle Questions
- What is keeping them from getting there?
- Motivator Questions
- Why do they want to get there?
Next, you want to assess their level of commitment by using SVIC.
- Summarize their desired state, problems and obstacles and motivators
- Verify you have it right
- Find out how Important it is for them to move forward with someone.
- Understand how Committed they are by asking about Resources, Time and Money
The key to presenting, proposing and closing is matching the benefits of your solution to their desired state, problems, obstacles and motivators. Show them how you solve their problems and what makes you different from others.
One way to engage the prospect in what the solution might look like is to use the “Let’s Pretend” strategy like this, “While we aren’t there yet, let’s pretend we were moving forward, what would it look like with respect to (resources, time, etc.) and how might we best work together to do this?
Build Your Sales CRM for Success
Select and implement the tools to support your strategy and processes. We believe that HubSpot offers the best platform for small businesses that want to scale. As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, we support small businesses implementing HubSpot. We built a Trello Board that outlines the process with 7 “Trello Lists” for these functions to implement the Sales Hub:
- Individual CRM Setup
- What is your Sales Process? Build Deal Stages
- Filtering Data for Productivity - Build Lead Process
- Build Database Records and Properties
- Build Reports and Dashboards
- Conduct Starter Sales Activities
- Conduct Professional Sales Activities
Each list defines the steps for that part of the process and each card in the list guides you in the process with our recommendations and links to Knowledgebase articles and specific video courses from HubSpot.
Want to hire and keep SUCCESSFUL salespeople?
Want to break through that plateau?
We believe the first step is to Make Your Business .. Sales Team Ready.
Do you struggle to find the right salesperson?
You may not even know what is it that you want in a SUCCESSFUL salesperson.
If you struggle with this...
We help small business owners scale their teams from themselves to 5 salespeople and beyond.
Schedule today a DISCOVERY consultation with Dave Priddy!