A survey of over 100 enterprise sales leaders (conducted by Revegy in Q4 2015) revealed that sales people who met or exceeded their quotas last year attributed their success to their ability to:
- gain visibility with key decision makers
- obtain a clear understanding of business goals and priorities (and map their solution to them)
- and quantify the potential value and ROI of their solution
The survey also said that 85% have higher quotas this year over last year. We know that some will make it and some won’t. So how can we make every sales rep a winner?
A good place to start is to understand how decisions are influenced across the buyer’s organization, and finding a path of visibility to the right decision makers and influencers.
Of course, knowing that a customer wants to increase revenue or increase shareholder value is merely interesting. The best sales teams understand the merits of getting specific about understanding the customer’s goals and priorities. They understand that if you have the right relationships at the right levels, and those key stakeholders believe you can help them achieve their business goals, then it only makes sense that the customer would share their specific MBOs to ensure their success. Without that information, it’s much more difficult to ensure a win-win outcome.
Case in point: I had a client who was able to identify a customer’s top three overarching priorities – no small feat since they were a Fortune 100 healthcare and pharmaceutical company. They then discussed with the key decision makers and influencers how their products and services could help solve just one of their three top priorities, which captured the attention of executives that previously would never have given them the time of day. After signing a $17 million-dollar deal, the account team was elated with how much easier it was to get anything to happen when they were able to link their product and service offerings to the customer’s top goals and initiatives.
With success like this, you can see how they could make every sales rep a winner.
Try using a visual approach, such as Revegy, to better understand the gaps in your knowledge and determine what is preventing your customers from achieving their key goals and priorities, map your product and services to show how you can remove those barriers, and demonstrate the value and ROI of your solution. Happy selling!
Janice Mars, Principal and Founder of SalesLatitude, is a sales performance improvement consultant and change agent focused on growing top performers to impact bottom line growth. With more than 30 years of experience as a senior business and sales executive, she helps companies build successful sales teams by maximizing their time and resources, selling from the buyer’s point of view, and strengthening the effectiveness of leadership. View my LinkedIn profile | Twitter
