This document discusses ways to increase sales velocity by focusing on winning the deals currently being worked on. It recommends understanding key sales velocity levers like knowing customers, engaging in the right deals, and planning sales calls. A sales velocity equation shows how increasing average deal value, win rate, or number of opportunities by 10% can significantly impact overall sales velocity. The document emphasizes focusing efforts on increasing deal value, win rate, and reducing sales cycle over just increasing opportunities, in order to improve sales velocity by 34%. It provides tips for understanding customers, engaging in the right deals through opportunity qualification, and planning effective sales calls.
12. ' The TAS Group 2014
But who is the customer?
Sales Productivity
13. ' The TAS Group 2014
But who is the customer?
Sales Productivity
14. ' The TAS Group 2014
But companies dont buy, people do
Decision Maker: The buying role or persona that has the ability to
commit the company to a vendor or to a certain strategic direction and
has accountability for selecting the solution. This is the person who owns
the problem your solution addresses.
To whom do you target your primary messages?
You may also have secondary personas for whom you will need to craft separate
and distinct messages.Your primary messages should be targeted to your primary
buyer, and your secondary messages to other influencers.
15. ' The TAS Group 2014
Poll
How well doyou feelyourcompany
understandyourprimarybuyers businessgoals andpressures:
A) We understandthematasurfacelevel
B) We doa goodjob at atacticallevel
C) We doa verygood job andlink it toour strategy
D) Itisatthecore of whatwe doandhowwe doit
16. ' The TAS Group 2014
PrimaryPersona Center of your Universe
CFO
HR
Sales
Rep
17. ' The TAS Group 2014
Customer Map
Goals
Pressures
Obstacles Something that isn t working; a task, situation or
process that is broken and needs to be fixed or
is required to deploy initiative but does not exist.
Initiatives Specific projects created to address the
pressures and achieve the goals and owned the
Decision Maker
An end result to be achieved by the Decision
Maker (ideally) with a measurable outcome and
a specified timeframe.
The internal and/or external pressures that
significantly impact the Decision Maker and
serve as the catalyst for initiatives or action.
Solution
A set of capabilities or products that help the
customer to remove obstacles to relieve
business pressures.
18. ' The TAS Group 2014
Customer Map Example: Increasing Sales
How do they
measure success?
What does this
person care about?
Revenue growth
Sales productivity
Forecast accuracy
Quarterly targets
Visibility
Pipeline
Goals
Pressures
Obstacles
Initiatives
Grow revenue by 15% in FY 2015
Missing quarterly targets because:
- Competitive losses
- Poor growth in current accounts
- Inadequate pipeline
- High sales attrition
Key account program Strategic Comp Plan
Can t access key players
No account plan method
Limited cross-sell / upsell
Product not solution sale
Plans not aligned to GTM
No collaboration
Delay in payout
Multi-currency issues
Solution
A set of capabilities or products that help the
customer to remove obstacles to relieve
business pressures.
21. ' The TAS Group 2014
The Customer Buying Process
Customer
Diligence
Begins
Customer
Purchases
Source: CEB
of the
purchase
decision
is complete before
a customer even
calls a supplier.
57%
Customer
Engages
Supplier
26. ' The TAS Group 2014
Flanking Strategy:
Shifts the focus of a customer
or additional issues that they had not taken into
consideration that drive additional value & favor your
solution.
RULES
Don
the rules
Executive
support
Make your
move last
Don t open
the door
Flanking Strategy
27. ' The TAS Group 2014
Qualification Matters: Reminder
28. ' The TAS Group 2014
FlankingStrategy:Flank to Someone
29. ' The TAS Group 2014
Then Plan your Sales Call
30. ' The TAS Group 2014
Are Sellers Prepared for Customer Calls?
13%
61%
26%
100%
50%
0%
Totally
Unprepared
Somewhat
Prepared
Adequately
Prepared
Source: Forrester Research
31. ' The TAS Group 2014
Source: Forrester Executive Buyer Insight Study
Why are Smart Call Plans Important?
Executives don’t believe
that salespeople are well
prepared to engage with them...
because they know about their
own offerings, not the realities
and needs of executives.
Salespeople are knowledgeable about:
Their own products
and services
Buyers roles
and responsibilities
Buyers specific
business
Questions
buyers ask
40% 36% 43%71%
32. ' The TAS Group 2014
10 Elements of a Smart Sales Call Plan
1. Logistics
2. SettingExpectations
3. SalesCallStrategy
4. People andProblems
5. ObjectivesandOutcomes
6. HighYield Questions
7. Collaboration
8. Smart
9. Mobile
10. Cloud
35. ' The TAS Group 2014
5. Objectives and Outcomes
how DO YOU KNOW you have
made progress?
what do you want to
ACHIEVE in the meeting?
36. ' The TAS Group 2014
5. Objectives and Outcomes
Sub-optimal Objectives
Advance the relationship (how do you know?)
Make progress in the sale (from where to where?)
Demo the software (to what end?)
Help them understand our value (why?)
Good Objectives
Have Pat Morello, the business sponsor, verbally confirm that we
understand their requirements
Work through the cost of their production inefficiencies today to get
Helen Hastings from the finance committee, to describe the daily cost of
inaction.
Mitch Boyle to confirm the business pressure that underlines the fact that
security and performance are key decision criteria.
Get agreement from Pat Morello to a Phase1 deployment to validate that
our solution is a good fit for their requirements
37. ' The TAS Group 2014
UnderstandtheKeySalesVelocity Levers
Knowyourcustomer
EngageintheRIGHTdeals
Plan yoursalescalls
Four points to win more deals…
39. ' The TAS Group 2014
Sales Process Drives
High Performers
* High Performers are companies where more than 75% of sales team makes quota. All data on this slide ' The TAS Group, Dealmaker Index Study 2013, n=750
Predictable
Business
DefinedSalesProcess?
and
30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
%CompanieswithadefinedSalesProcess
High Performers*
Good Performers
Medium Performers
Poor Performers
Accurate
Accurate
Inaccurate
Inaccurate
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
No Sales
Process
Defined
Process
SalesProcessImprovesForecastAccuracy200%
40%NO 60%YES
40. ' The TAS Group 2014
of reps can
access key
players
54%
Only
of companies
do not have
a defined
Sales Process
40%
of sales reps
are good at
uncovering
customers
problems
61%
Are you
working each
deal the right
way?
of reps are
good at
opportunity
qualification
59%
Only