The primary role for an outsourced VP of Sales is to create a path towards growth for small businesses. Having been an integral part of numerous start-ups, I’ve accumulated a significant amount lessons which present opportunities that can be taken advantage of while reducing headaches, pain, and detrimental distractions. Having taken significant risk myself, as well as with others, I’ve learned valuable lessons through the school of ‘hard knocks’. I’d love to share my experiences to help you navigate a path for your company and your success.

It’s more strength building than ‘hard knocks’ as long as you get back on your feet to lean-in and press on. Strength built in these hard knocks predominantly creates character. Do you understand the strengths and weaknesses of yourself within your organization and with your team. Let’s identify the magic of your team, define how to best position their talents, and evaluate the tools at your disposal to maximize your team’s abilities.  The tools and resources we leverage have helped thousands of SMB’s and are proven to drive productivity, create an open environment with increased visibility to a sales pipeline and call out areas where additional support can assist in building relationships and securing recurring revenue while building a cohesive team. 

Within Sales Xceleration, as an outsourced VP of Sales, there’s three things that I think are imperative in terms of what we do, and what I focus on.

Develop the Sales Strategy

The best way to begin building the proper sales strategy for a business comes from getting inside an organization, and intimately understanding your culture, your organization and your unique selling proposition (USP), in terms of identifying what your services deliver to your target customers. We need to articulate exactly what your point of differentiation is from your competitors, and then identify how to best communicate this to your market and prospective buyers. From this, we will begin to articulate your customer profile(s) and target where there are opportunities for your product or service to deliver value, increase productivity, and reduce their pain.  We will evaluate all sales, products, categories and/or services that deliver the most value to the customers, as well as the most profit, and focus our efforts where the bottom line and health of the organization grows. These are the key elements of developing a sales strategy. 

Identifying the Sales Process

I begin by identifying ways your business delivers exceptional service, influences the appropriate people in an organization and uncover a desire to want your products or your services. I help identify and refine the process that best positions your business by creating a step-by-step and natural manner to engage your prospective clients to streamline the sale and secure more business.  The reason for creating a consistent sales process is simple: 1) to deliver consistency, 2) identify skill sets, strengths and weaknesses of the sales team, and “ID” where you can coach improvements. 3) With a process in place you can hire, train, and scale a sales plan with accurate forecasts and a stoked team of contributors.

When there is a process, you will be able to see where there’s a break down in any portion of the sales process itself, and you can coach your team on to best way to navigate the situation, get back on track, and make improvements. That’s the beauty of the experience that I bring to the table. I’ve fought process, relying on gut and “savvy sales skills”, yet nothing wins more business and recurring revenue than a well managed sales process. I’ve been through recessions, mandatory culling of the team and with a sales process I have been able to reduce the hardship with proof in performance. With different organizations I have hired hundreds of highly qualified salespeople, and if there’s not a process, the team is not given the full opportunity to excel, making your business and themselves successful by servicing the customer.  With a process, the team hits their stride faster, the customer trust is enhanced, and your sales improve. As a result, the team wins. And, winning is fun, rewarding, and attractive to clients, reps, and your top & bottom line.

Execution

Execution is making sure that in your sales process, you specify your objectives with time sensitive triggers and hit those targets on the determined timeline. When there are clearly defined goals for growth and potential for your business with your customers you have expectations that can be managed, nurtured, and supported. You can also identify when the team is overwhelmed and in need of help.  The help may come from other team members, or the growth of adding new team members. One of the key elements of execution is making sure that you have the ability to leverage tools, like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool where you can identify at every step of the day, week, month and year, where you’re at in your sales revenue today, tomorrow and the next day. A well managed and easy to use CRM is clutch to any business that desires growth and a plan to secure business.  A CRM is a “NO BS” tool that exhibits every step of the sales process, keeps the team apprised of opportunities, and lends visibility to the sales path to growth.

Then we need to know when the peaks and valleys of your revenue occur and understand the cycle of business to create methods and activities to level this cash-flow roller-coaster. How best do we influence incentives, programs and compensation plans to drive the results your business needs. Incentives for your sales staff can level out those peaks and valleys and doing so with a CRM where you can forecast and navigate the path forward to smooth out those peaks and valleys is beneficial if not imperative.

Next thing is setting up metrics. Sales metrics to measure key sales objectives, the individuals, and the entire sales organization.  You can set up key performance indicators (KPI’s) with sales metrics to measure performance and provide people the opportunity to grow in their roles. Meet with each sales person 1:1, find the areas where they can improve, measure their progress (together) and encourage them by focussing on areas of strength within their activities. Measure, Mentor – repeat (manage).

What I do with Sales Xceleration is develop a sales strategy, a cohesive process and execute upon that process to bring predictable and forecasted sales that will help you plan your business for growth.

The main benefit for you, the owner or CEO is two words. Hope and Freedom. Hope is given back to small business owners to where you might be so wrapped up in the day-to-day operations of the business that you have lost sight of the hope and elements of the passion that launched your dream. The hope is to eventually gain more freedom in your day and to help the people and company grow, as opposed to working in each department of the company every step of the way, selling the product or service yourself or feeling the need to be or micro-managing.

Are you tied up in operations, tied up in the day-to-day, working too many late nights and weekends away from your family or hobbies? This is not the freedom for an owner or executive. Showing you hope in a structure that you can leverage and come home for dinner and be with your family and free-up your weekends is my goal. The hope and freedom that I deliver through strategy, process, and execution gives you the ability to realize a future that brings you more satisfaction, and delivers a healthier working environment where you and your team thrive.

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Many businesses struggle to grow their sales. As an experienced sales consultant, I help business owners drive sales growth when you need it most. Contact Me Today!