What is a Sales Operating System?
A Sales Operating Systemis the combination of systems, processes and strategies needed to manage and grow an effective sales organization. It is the foundation than enables a company to scale sales and produces predictable, reliable revenue.
Sales Strategy
Numbers are Not a Strategy
Setting a goal is important, creating a strategy to hit it is critical to success.
Sales strategy starts with an understanding of your vision for the company, ideal customer profile, value proposition and market positioning. Those set the priorities and parameters around the sales work that needs to be done.
Once those core principles are in place you can begin the plan to achieve your goals. You will need both a sales strategy and a lead-generation strategy. When building these strategies you can dig into the markets, products and people you want to focus on to achieve your goals. Then you will need to think about channels and messaging that get you there.
Sales Process
Activity w/o Process is Chaos
Keeping your sales team busy is important, staying focused on the activities that deliver results is critical.
Mapping the processes your team should follow will keep them on track and successful. Building a sales process that maps the steps required to close a deal, and then reflecting that in the CRM will help your team stay on track and prevent missed steps, questions or activities.
Your sales process will be the starting place to build out the processes around growing key accounts, managing opportunities and hiring and onboarding sales.
With everyone using the same systems and processes your team will be easier to manage and coach, and will have better sales results.
Sales Management
Don’t Assume Sellers Know
Telling your team what works is a start, keeping them on track will improve the outcomes.
The more consistent you are managing the sales team, the more consistent their success will be. No one likes sales meetings because they focus on the wrong things. Keep meetings predictably positive. Set an agenda and stick to it. Use the meeting time for tracking team progress, training and group activities.
Focus one-to-one time with sellers on funnel reviews, coaching and progress toward goals. Set meetings for each of these types of activities. Set expectations around preparation, agenda and acceptable behavior.
Your job is to manage and coach your team to success.
Sales Assessment
Make Sure it All Fits Together
Training your team is a great start, but training the wrong people on the wrong things won’t get the right results.
Assessing your team, your processes and your messaging are a critical part of making your team successful. If it was right once, it doesn’t mean it’s still right.
Assess your current strategies and systems looking for places where the systems break down. Common mistakes are a good indicator that a system isn’t working.
One system to focus on is the funnel. If you are constantly assessing your funnel and pulling the critical information you run your sales team and your company you will have great results.
Let's Build Your Sales Operating System
Re: Sales™ builds data-driven Sales Operating Systems that turn numbers into a dream come true.
