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January 2, 2013
3 Places Sales Leaders Should Look if You Missed the Number in 2012
By: SBI
Don’t waste time worrying about 2012 anymore. It’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to change it. But you can excel in 2013 because of your shortcomings in 2012.
There are 3 main areas to look to answer these questions. And with these answers come chances for improvement in 2013.
1. Talent Assessment of Sales Leadership and Sales Reps
The question to ask yourself is: Was the team good enough?
Organization talent and people is often an emotionally charged area. It’s easy to make talent decisions based more on gut reaction than facts. This is dangerous. If you have a team of “B” and “C” players, winning will be impossible.
Start the year with a formal assessment of the entire team. Build specific competency and accountability based scorecards for Sales Leadership and Sales Reps.
Download the Sales Manager Competencies and Example Accountabilities Here
Conduct a complete assessment of your team on all competencies and accountabilities. The output will be a Talent Portfolio ranking of your “A”, “B” and “C” players.
Now, what should you do with this information?
Making the number starts with having the right talent on board.
2. Lead Generation
Did you generate enough leads in 2012 to make the number?
The VP-Sales and the VP-Marketing own this area jointly. Regardless of ownership, making the number requires sufficient generation of leads. Can you analyze your 2012 Lead Generation using top down and bottom up approaches?
Here are a few key things to keep in mind with lead generation:
3. Win/Loss Assessment
A Win/Loss Assessment is an invaluable tool. It provides a sales assessment through the eyes of your customers. It allows for transparency, and reveals why opportunities are won or lost. It can also help pinpoint untapped areas of opportunity within your organization.
Download the Win/Loss Review Template Here.
Use the Win/Loss template to immediately to get a jumpstart in 2013. When addressing Win/Loss ratios for 2013, focus first on:
Understanding how your customer buys allows you to remove friction in the selling process. This in turn generates more conversions. Without this knowledge you eliminate yourself from deals by not being aligned. Your competitors are aligned – you need to be as well.
Initiate a formalized Win/Loss/No Decision process in 2013. You’ll have continuous visibility and transparency into:
Discover opportunities for growth by examining your organization in these three areas. These are the three biggest “buckets” where you can improve your organization. Just think about the process.
1) Get enough leads.
2) Have the right talent to convert leads.
3) Analyze past successes and failures to continuously improve
Download the tools to take your first step to a successful 2013.
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