What’s not clicking in companies that are sales-challenged?

Confusing the roles of branding, marketing, sales and customer service. “It’s actually a fairly simple distinction.”  The objectives of each process are:

• Marketing: Obtaining qualified leads through:
• Branding (you are trusted)
• PR (you are relevant)
• Digital marketing (outbound) (you are engaged)
• Digital marketing (inbound) SEO & SEM, etc. (you are found)
• Social media/social networking outreach (you’re authentic)
• Content creation-blogs/video/podcasts (you are an authority)
• Sales: Making an average of 12 touches with a qualified lead to close the sale.
• Customer Service/Account Management: Once you have the customer, execute brilliantly and develop a great relationship.  Then, grow the account by upselling, cross-selling and obtaining referrals.

The mistake many companies make is that they have hunter salespeople doing marketing, sales, and account management when the company should take care of marketing and customer service and let the hunter salespeople sell.

Promoting the best salesperson in the company to the position of sales manager.

“Now we may have shot ourselves in both feet”.  “We’ve lost our best salesperson and gained a lousy sales manager.  The aptitude for the manager’s job is not the same as the aptitude for an outside ‘hunter’ salesperson.  Only a small subset of people have a high aptitude for both jobs.”

Failing to have a repeatable process for sales.

Most CEOs want a repeatable process for these salespeople so that as they go through touches one through twelve, the outcome is more predictable”.

The “right” overall sales process will vary a bit for each company, but the basic sales processes need to be developed and put in place by top management (CEOs and sales managers).  Most top companies have a “sales playbook” that includes prospecting, qualification, pursuing, and closing processes.

Misunderstanding the CEO’s role in locating top salespeople.

Almost all CEOs want top salespeople, but they don’t take it as their personal job to find them.  It should be one of the CEO’s top jobs in life to find top salespeople.

How?

• Identify them.  They are usually within your industry, working for a competitor or vendor/supplier.
• Build relationships with them. Personally stay in touch. Take them to dinner periodically.  Don’t delegate that task.
• Position yourself as the “go to” employer of choice. When they are in a chaotic situation, they will think of you first.

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