Sales Consulting
Sales leaders have always wrestled with the challenge, “How do you continuously evolve the sales function to deliver better results?” The underlying question is, “What are the critical success factors you must address in order to do that?"
Often, the primary issue for sales leaders is selecting what they should do to deliver better results. Many have used our Chief Sales Officer Agenda to help select and activate key initiatives to gain traction and sustain growth. Others have implemented our Account Management Execution model to improve strategic account management, ensure client alignment, and deliver convincing client value. And still others have engaged us for Sales Process Optimization to better align their selling organization with their customers’ needs and expectations.
Whatever your priority is, Critical Path Strategies can provide you with the strategies and skills to lead, manage, and coach your team. The results? Action-oriented sales teams aligned with customers, compelling go-to-market messages, and a framework for execution and accountability.
The most important initiative and highest priority for sales leaders is account management execution. The discipline of managing your most important accounts can be the fundamental differentiator in growing top-line revenue. It is more critical than ever that your customer-facing team is consistently and repeatedly providing recognizable value to your most important customers.
For sales leaders, there is always too much to do. But there is only a limited amount of resources you can access and leverage at any one time, and a limited number of things you can do in a particular time period. So how do you choose what initiatives to undertake to drive sustained performance, accountability, and results?
There are many important projects and initiatives that you want to undertake in order to meet current standards, implement better ways of doing things, and adjust for market influences and customer requirements. But it is also important to realize that you must constantly weigh the value each new initiative brings and balance that with the value you provide to your customer and the results produced for your company.
Coaching adds dimension to sales-based or strategic company initiatives and ensures momentum.
There are different types of people and they all require a different kind of sales approach. Target groups may include key customers, partners, suppliers, dealers/channels, inter-company departments, or cross-company businesses. Building long-term business relationships with each of them requires focus and commitment.
Too often, salespeople don't formulate how they want to talk to a customer or what message they want to convey until they're standing in front of the customer--not the most optimum time to formulate a value proposition or sales strategy. Sales playbooks capture and document for your entire selling organization what your best salespeople do to qualify, advance, and win deals.
Often, companies discover that changes in their own organizational goals or in marketplace dynamics cause the existing sales process to be sluggish or ineffective. Perhaps tried and true approaches to opportunities no longer work or communication between members of extended teams starts to deteriorate. The ability to forecast accurately diminishes and accountability for results has become more difficult.
A review of your organization strategy, supporting technology, people, and processes can help align your selling organization processes and methodologies with customer needs and expectations.
Constant changes in the sales environment make defining and differentiating the value of your offering an ongoing process. Markets and competition constantly shift; available customer mind share varies; procurement organizations repeatedly try to commoditize your goods and services. How do you energize your customer’s perception of you and your company?