Scaling Your Sales Team...

Without Scaling Your Budget...

The constant challenge for any sales organization is maximizing growth without disproportionately growing your overhead, particularly when there is a shortage of BOTH experience AND bandwith...common in both startups and growth companies...  

Founding Partner Jim Boudreau Training
Reviewing B2B Sales Process Effectiveness

The Problem

Contemporary B2B selling requires diligent and determined efforts from the top to the bottom of the funnel.  Converting each lead and opportunity, however, requires different skills, rhythm and cadence:

  • Prospecting requires a high volume of "smiling and dialing" to develop and qualify sufficient volumes of leads.
  • Those leads must be effectively managed through a structured opportunity qualification process to ensure that resources are dedicated to the highest probability / highest value deals.
  • Closed deals must be turned into long-term accounts via consistent connections and communications, coupled with a deep understanding of mutual business drivers.
The aptitudes and activities needed to manage these three aspects of a company's sales efforts are vastly different, and should occupy different positions on the org chart.  And, each needs to be managed to the appropriate KPIs.

What Choice Do You Have?

We’ve seen companies approach this conundrum a few ways:

  • Operate with 1 or more “closers” that are well connected and compensated. The tradeoff here is that, with little or no formal sales leadership, you can end up too dependent upon individual contributors.

    OR

  • Invest in a high-priced sales executive with junior sales team members who may or may not be adept at closing.  Here the challenge is that same executive having the bandwidth to close deals while managing and mentoring less experienced staff.

Investing in a "best of all worlds" scenario with experienced leadership, talented closers and the systems to support a volume of sales activities comes with a fair amount of risk.  It will always take longer than expected for the results to hit the bottom line and, unless you’re very well capitalized, the impact to the bottom line can be precarious.

 

Where We Come In – A 3rd Option

We’ve always been advocates for a combination of leadership, talent and systems, executed pragmatically and systematically.  What does that look like?

For many companies this option provides the "best of all worlds", combining the ideal level of experience, capability and bandwidth.  There will be, of course, some variability in how we approach this, depending upon:

  • Your transaction volume
  • The complexity of your sales process
  • Your typical sell cycle

Each of these things we’ll review in our initial consultation.

How You Benefit

Most of the benefits are obvious, and at the risk of being redundant, here’s what you gain from the use of an experienced Fractional Sales Leader:

More experience for less money
A larger sales team with more selling time
A more structured approach to driving revenue

A lot of CEOs / Owner Operators choose to hire the "industry professional with all the contacts and industry experience".  This can certainly benefit you in the short term…but what happens when some other company offers them more money to do the same thing for them?   We’ve "seen this movie before" and always advocate for a reliable selling system over individual contributors.  Ever watch the movie "Money Ball"?   It applies to business perhaps even more than it applied in that case to baseball.

 

FAQ

What do you mean by a selling system?

A Selling System is a process for qualifying leads and managing opportunities.  The best systems map out the different stages in a sell cycle, from the initial call/meeting to deep-dive qualifying, preparing demos, who to quote and who not to, etc.  Typically this process is codified into a CRM where sales performance can be measured by activities as well as results.

How do you work with us?

We work as an embedded executive, customizing and implementing a selling system specifically for your business, structuring, managing and mentoring your sales team, etc.  Our activities are not much different from a full-time sales leader, just more concentrated at a lower cost.

Do you focus on specific industries?

The best practices we implement are industry agnostic, but we work with you to nuance the processes and playbooks to suit the idiosyncrasies of your market(s).

How quickly can we expect results?

It will depend upon a few different factors, including the makeup of your existing sales team, how well your sales process is documented, if you have a CRM system and how well used it is.  That said, we move quickly, know what to look for and know where we need to get you.  Depending upon your sell-cycle and the aforementioned variables, we typically start to see improvements in your sales metrics within 90 days.

How are you compensated?

We typically work on a combination of fees and a gain-share from the results we drive for your business.  We put our money where our mouth is and take great pride in the success we have driven for our clients.

A Few of Our Clients...

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