“I love it when people are ready to jump right into sales training,” confesses Merit Kahn, CEO of SELLect Sales Development, “but boy are they shocked when I stop them in their tracks and tell them they are not ready.”
Many sales training consultants want to implement a one-size-fits-all training program, but training is secondary to the Strategy and Structure that a business must implement to be successful.
Kahn makes it clear that engaging in sales skills training before properly assessing the strategy and structure of an organization is the sales industry’s version of malpractice.
One of the main goals of your Executive Team is to define and refine the sales strategy that will support the company’s goals and objectives. Making that happen can be difficult, but it all starts by using the right sales development strategies.
For more immediate help with sales training development, or access to our online sales training platform, contact us today! SELLect is one of the highest quality sales training methodologies available and can benefit both in-house teams and those interested in starting a sales training consulting business.
Challenges that Sales Strategy Development Help You Overcome
Typical challenges that require a review and evaluation of your current strategy are:
- Our company has an aggressive business plan and needs help implementing a sales strategy and process that will achieve the revenue, growth, and profit objectives
- We are unsure if sales and marketing are aligned to deliver the results we need
- Our company has been successful in a business-to-consumer model but needs to shift its focus to a business-to-business model (or vice versa)
- We are pursuing an M&A strategy, but have no way to effectively evaluate the sales team resources or incorporate disparate sales structures and compensation plans.
- We have questions about the optimum structure for our sales team.—Inside sales, outside sales, direct sales, channel partners, or a combination? What skill sets should we hire first? Do we need to separate the hunter role from the farmer role?
- We have questions about which territories, verticals, or Ideal Client Personas we should target
- We know we need to invest in sales resources but are worried about how we should invest our money
- Are Sales and Marketing aligned with product development plans and operational capacity?
- What is the best lead generation strategy? How do we measure progress and success?
- Our company is uncertain if the current sales structure and process support our sales strategy
- Could a matrix sales structure help us achieve our revenue objectives?
- We need a strategy to penetrate new and/or evolving market segments
- How should our compensation plans be structured? Do we reward the right behaviors?
- The executive team doesn’t have a strong sales background
- We don’t know our strategy
- We are an entrepreneurial company that needs strategic sales planning and leadership
6 Important Steps for Your Sales Strategy Development Process
Your leadership team needs to establish a sales development plan that incorporates industry best practices and first-party data about your existing process.
The following six sales strategy development steps will help refine the process that your SDRs must follow to win on a regular basis.
1. Clearly Define What an SQL Looks Like
What does a Sales Qualified Lead look like for your sales team? Whether you’re using popular definitions like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe), ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money), or a custom definition, your team needs an established norm for SQLs.
2. Tailor the Duties of Your Sales Development Reps
Your sales development reps need to be trained in different processes depending on whether they focus on an inbound vs. outbound sales process. The old school belief that salespeople are salespeople can eventually lead your team to failure.
There are marked differences in inbound and outbound sales requirements. For example, an outbound sales rep may not understand the importance of following up with an inbound lead within the hour.
3. Set Touch Campaign Expectations
Establish the appropriate amount of touches for your sales process. Many industry norms establish a minimum of seven touches per contact at a company. Don’t let your sales team miss out on opportunities because they didn’t follow up enough times to cut through the noise.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn has become an incredibly important medium, and should be included in your touch campaign.
4. Establish Call Length Guidelines
Your team should have a clear understanding of the optimal call length according to your process guidelines. Long call times have been known to exhaust leads and deteriorate the relationship that would lead to a further touchpoint.
By establishing the appropriate length of a call from the start, you’re setting your sales team up for success. You will need to use industry benchmarking data in combination with your own first-party data to determine what the optimal length truly is.
5. Incentivize Success
It is important to standardize, then incentivize the success of your salespeople. After clearly defining what a Sales Qualified Lead is, set incentives that compensate your team based on their SQL generation. You can even add extra bonuses for closed business to ensure your team isn’t just going through the motions to meet technical dimensions.
6. Use the Right Technology
Having the right tech stack is critical to the success of your sales development strategy. The right sales technology will not only standardize an efficient process, but it will automate work that your team can invest in real sales efforts. Finding the right mix of email, CRM, and sales intelligence software to streamline the workflow of your SDRs can significantly boost performance.
Find Our How SELLect Online Can Help Your Team Win
SELLECT online will teach you how to SELL more, SELL faster, and SELL smarter! Our library of training videos, interactive webinars, tools, and templates are designed to help you find prospects, qualify opportunities, and close deals.
Get started with our online sales training today!
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