Why are some making progress while others are stagnating? Where is that growth point in an IT company?
The neighbor's grass is greener, and for some reason he has more sales, although the site is the same as yours. So why? Why do some have sales and others don't? Sales reps are the same on Linkedin, as well as services and offers. People often write to me and say: "There's a cool company, and we want to sell like them too, help us to puzzle it out and set up the things". In most cases, this request indicates that you, guys, do not want to work and understand your tasks. It's easier to wish the job on somebody else and just wait for the result. This is the main problem for a lot of companies. Just pass the job on to someone else.
Let's look at the classic structure of the sales department.
What's going on here? Yes, usually nothing special)))) The whole operation mode depends on one manager, who will generate ideas or not. Will be able to find time to give feedback to everyone or not. Will find a budget for everybody's training and coaching, or will not be able to give reasons for it. Such a team can handle only the sale of very simple solutions if complex expertise and skills are not needed.
Now let's analyze the more elaborate structure of the sales department.
What's fine here? We can see here specializations based on skills and properties. A good model and has every chance to perform if the sales manager effectively drives the frameworks and gives flash feedback to his colleagues. A sales manager can concentrate on his tasks and not pull everybody out of the fire, while colleagues are in the right and proper places, having all the tools and being aware of their development path.
And now let's analyze the modern structure of the sales department.
But first, I would like to notice: what was the biggest inefficiency I saw in most IT companies? No, these were not salespeople, but business researchers and business analysts for the internal team, who could do the following on a regular basis:
- prepare reports together with marketers by industries
- prepare new outreach hypotheses
- conduct the first tests of ideas and test the response
- develop a business line internally to niche and identify the strengths of the company
What do salespeople constantly face? They are required to have ideas about where to go, and
they do not have time for this. What do Sales reps need? They need badges saying that they are better than others, why they sell services to these people in this niche. What more can sales and everyone else wish for? Clear criteria—why is it so necessary for the client? What's the point of this other than saving money? The Sales himself or even the Head will not be able to collect deep analytics 'cause just lack of time and energy, no one ever did it. The second point is that we need to control our client at any stage, from the first response to the final decision, especially in the US market, where customers are super demanding when it comes to the format of dialogue and the reaction rate. You blunt—you lose. For this purpose, special groups must be created to control each stage of the communication process with maximum quality.
But for this whole range of tasks, you must have time, energy, and new ideas nonstop. What are the persistent issues here? Time heads often have very little of it because they are stuck in reports to management or in a micromanagement format, controlling every comma of their colleagues, afraid that the shaky box will fall apart. And the final and most important aspect is ideas. It works like this: if there is no time or energy to invent something, to create, to compose, or to read, it will not work 100% correctly later because it was done in a hurry. It is necessary to create a unit that will independently, qualitatively, and calmly look for solutions that the sales department and the company can provide. Furthermore, it should be tailored to what we really know how to do, and not with the words: “well, we can do a little here, here, and here.”
What results can be obtained in terms of implementing such a system in the company? It's gonna be a thing. The fastest changes that you will get immediately after implementation:
– Your outreach will become much better in terms of identifying people, messages, and what suits a potential client.
– Sales will be much more confident during the call, they will be more explicit, with a clear understanding of what value they are selling, except “cheaper than in S-F”.
– Your marketers can make a sigh of relief and finally proceed to normal ABM strategies with a faster switch to initial testing on the outreach campaign, finding those who passed the test, and sending them to the qualitative ABM process.
– You will be able to hire highly focused specialists from the necessary fields and niches to drive expertise, expand the set of services, and strengthen pre-sale.
– You will be able to identify your partners more accurately and find touchpoints faster.
To sum up, you not only get quality sales, but you also qualitatively change the structure of your company and acquire the expertise needed by the market. You know how to quickly adapt to new customers and forecast.
The question out of your head: "Oh, it's probably expensive and difficult". Then go to the very beginning of the article, and compete for your customers with others—just by means of
a beautiful design. It's not expensive, it's not difficult, but you need to appoint the right specialist for this, assign a task, and start the process of change.
That's it!