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December 31, 2017
Sales Leadership: Top 10 Revenue Growth Articles of 2017
By: Matt Sharrers
It’s important to understand that the roles of VP of Sales and Chief Sales Officer (CSO) are equally complex. But, putting the wrong role into play in your growing company can spell disaster.
The newly promoted manager repeats behavior that made him successful as a rep. He neglects his skill development and sales initiatives. His team flounders. He tries to do it himself. Before the year is over, he’s back in the field or on the street.
The number one reason opportunities go dark is lack of alignment between buyer and seller. An example is the seller providing pricing early while the buyer has unanswered questions. Throughout each of these stages, a deal can fall through the cracks.
We just completed a project for a mid-market company whose outside sales reps were over loaded with opportunities. They could not cover the accounts they were assigned and, quite frankly they should focus on the larger customers to ensure they make their goals. For years they slapped the label “run-rate-business” and looked the other way.
It’s easy to get stuck using the wrong approach for a win/loss analysis. Here’s how to conduct an analysis that results in useful recommendations.
‘A’ players generate 5x more revenue than ‘B’ players and 10x more than ‘C’ players. Validate your ‘A’ players to ensure you have what you think. Listed below are three examples of pseudo top-performers, and how to determine if your “A” Player is one. Download our ‘A’ Player Calculator and build a talent scorecard on more than just quota.
Depending on the size of your sales force, you may have hundreds of hours of selling time each week sitting in bad meetings. Your sales meetings are often run poorly by your front line sales managers.
Value-based pricing is a hot topic among B2B companies. Promises of higher profits and market share have been made credible by numerous success stories. Who wouldn’t want to share in that success? There’s little wonder that we are seeing more and more companies making the move.
Sales Leaders miss or make the number one sales call at a time. Yet they don’t pay attention to each call. They look at each rep’s quota and pipeline. These are difficult to control. Sales leaders can control the quality of sales calls every day. Great single sales call execution will lead to great results.
As a management consultant focused on revenue growth, I have the opportunity to observe and engage in many business’s sales operations from a perspective that is incredible. As a result, I’m frequently asked, “What separates the top sales leaders from the rest of the pack?”
Are you wondering if you have the right strategies to support your revenue growth goals? Here is an that will help you understand if you have a chance at success. Take the Revenue Growth Diagnostic test and rate your Sales Strategy against SBI’s emerging best practices to find out if:
Matt Sharrers is the CEO of SBI, a management consulting firm specialized in sales and marketing that is dedicated to helping you Make Your Number. Forbes recognizes SBI as one of The Best Management Consulting Firms in 2017.
Over the course of nearly a decade at SBI, Matt Sharrers was an instrumental early partner guiding SBI as the Senior Partner. Matt’s functional responsibilities included acting as the head of sales where he led SBI’s double-digit revenue growth, and was responsible for the hiring function to build SBI’s team of revenue generation experts.
Prior to joining SBI in 2009, Matt spent eleven years leading sales and marketing teams as a Vice President of Sales. Matt has “lived in the field.” As a result, he is the foremost expert in the art of separating fact from fiction as it relates to revenue growth best practices. CEOs and Private equity investors turn to Matt’s team at SBI when they need to unlock trapped growth inside of their companies.
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