overview
The Internet and the Great Recession of 2008 dramatically changed the buyer’s journey. Sales calls are hardly ever returned, and emails are unopened, often deleted as they come in.
Sales reps can no longer gain access to buyers simply by pounding the phones and sending hundreds of emails. And when they get in, they can’t win business by pitching their products and giving deep discounts.
Over 60 billion robocalls were made in 2019, making it even less likely that potential buyers will take a call from a caller they don’t know.
It is a very different selling landscape today, where sales reps have to wait to be invited, demonstrate real value in every communication to continue to be relevant, and continue to be of service until the sale is completed.
A different sales strategy is needed. The buying group today consists of anywhere from 6 to 12 stakeholders—all with their own challenges and needs, and sales reps must demonstrate clear, credible, and compelling ROI to each of these stakeholders to win the deal.
The only way sales reps can do that is if they deeply understand the challenges their potential buyers face and are able to articulate effective solutions. And that is hard enough to do in just one space, let alone multiple ones.
Clearly, Sellers can no longer just sell to anyone. They must clearly define their target industries, accounts, and personas in order to truly understand their potential buyers and demonstrate credible and compelling ROI.
We help our clients identify where they can win, help them define winning sales strategies, and provide the additional resources and expertise they need to execute these strategies with precision so that they consistently meet and exceed their revenue targets.
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Bringing sales practices, metrics & KPIs, and sales training brought immediate increases in sales performance.
The dramatic impact of a 4-month targeted campaign on new customer acquisition.
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The most important component of a Sales Strategy is selecting the right target: the right space in which to compete, the right types of accounts to go after, and the right personas to engage. It enables you to select the types of customers where you have the highest probability of winning, where you have the most compelling stories to tell, where your potential buyers perceive the lowest risk in engaging you--thereby improving win rates, accelerating deal closes, and increasing average deal sizes.
Today, there is no single "decision maker". Even CEOs and CFOs need significant buy-in from a number of stake holders before making a buy decision. Increasingly, these stakeholders are research-oriented and want to see compelling ROI before giving their thumbs up. The goal is not to win everyone, but to win the most influential customers in your chose space, then digitally telling a strong story about them so as to convince more of the rest of your market to buy from you. A simple way to think of it is to lock-in 20% of of the top 20% of your chosen market to become a dominant player in that space.
What does your sales strategy look like? Who are you targeting? What is your compelling value prop for this target? How can you back it up? Is your Marketing aligned with your Sales team? How many of your marketing leads are accepted by Sales? How many go on to the funnel? How many of those close? How long do they take to close? Who do you lose most often to? Are your sales metrics improving over the years, or declining? Answering these questions is critical to competing and winning in the digital era.
Sellers often avoid focusing their messages on a specific target market for fear of losing business elsewhere. However, this only dilutes what might otherwise have been a compelling message for a well-targeted group. In trying to address everyone, the watered-down messaging appeals to no one. Messages that lack focus worry risk-averse buyers. The end result is deals that take forever to close, and only after a deep discount.
A Go To Market Strategy (GTMS) is a comprehensive plan to drive a company’s product or service into a dominant position within a well-defined, defensible market space. It provides a detail and verifiable description of the target market, the key personas, a rigorous competitor analysis, complete and clear requirements for the Minimum Viable Product, three years of sales objectives, the positioning statement, pricing strategy, communication strategy, and sales strategy. Without such detailed GTMS, companies will face significant challenges in consistently meeting their revenue objectives.
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