The most important metric to gauge the success of your business is revenue. However, the chances are that your previous year's sales performance was below expectations. Here’s why we are confident of making such a bold generalization:
“48% of salespeople underperform or miss quota, 28% of salespeople change jobs each year and yet 39% of B2B purchasing decisions still favour the firm that sold better” (Chally Group).
Therefore, while selling well is really important, most companies are not able to master their sales.
Knowing this, what should you do to inoculate poor sales performance?
The Sales Playbook
The answer is to develop and document a concrete sales plan (we call it a Sales Playbook) for the year.
→ Download Now: ITF Sales Playbook [Free Tool]
All key functions within a business operate off of a plan. You use business plans, marketing plans, financial plans, and project plans to chart the evolution of your business and performance against key initiatives.
However, for some reason, when we ask to see our clients’ sales plans, they give us a blank stare that says “The dog ate my homework.”
There is a false belief that new sales are entirely dependent on good or bad salespeople and “the fix” to poor sales results is to replace the current sales team. A good salesperson will not succeed if the company’s sales strategy is flawed. Without question, the capabilities of the sales team are critical to sales success, but people are simply one component of the Sales Playbook. Success is also dependent on the sales strategy, process, and technology, as well as team structure.
If you want to dramatically improve sales performance, work on your Sales Playbook right now.
The Five Key Elements of the Sales Playbook
Are there other key elements of sales performance that are more important than developing a plan? What about hiring the right sales staff, training them, establishing a formal sales process, and enabling them with the right technology?
All of the items above are critical elements of sales enablement, but first you need the plan. Your Sales Playbook will help determine what your go-to-market coverage model is, and this will determine how many salespeople you need (an obvious pre-requisite to hiring and onboarding sales staff).
Footnotes
In 2013 – Steve Martin, the Harvard Business Review Blogger (not the comedian), conducted a survey of the top 100 technology companies in the United States. Amongst that group, 48% of software sales people did not achieve their quota (i.e., their minimum performance expectations).
Centre for Sales Leadership at DePaul University – Best Practice Survey
“Teaching Sales” Harvard Business Review July / Aug 2012 – Suzanne Fogel, David Hoffmeister, Richard Rocco and Daniels P. Strunk.