Focus is the key to great B2B complex sales management
By Jim Logan • Jan 24th, 2008 • Category: Advancing Sales Opportunities
The simple problem with most B2B complex sales management is focus on measuring and rewarding the wrong thing, closed sales. Riding your team to close more business is like yelling at a player to run faster. It feels good at some level, but it rarely results in a faster time or more money.
If you want more sales, you need to focus attention on and measure the things that result in more sales – number of calls, new contacts, meetings, presentations, trials, financial qualifications, etc.
Additionally, individual sales deals need to be reviewed on their progress towards close, not whether they’re closed or not. What I mean by this is all complex sales opportunities within a given market have a similar pattern of activity that culminates in a purchase decision. This activity needs to be divided into identifiable stages or milestones, then reviewed and measured against the stage of the sale you’re in and what activities are underway to advance the sale to the next stage.
Drop all the coffee is for closers BS and instead watch what’s going on in the sales process and lend help to advance individual opportunities to their natural close - growing revenue and crushing quotas.
What do you think?
I’m with you. There are a few business sectors out there (large power stations, military contracts, …) where it probably suffices to close once or few times in a career. In these sectors, and other sectors at that end of the B2B spectrum, there must be something else than closed sales to measure.
The same probably applies to ngo’s and industry associations, who are sent on a mission to pursue grand objectives on relatively small budgets.
Makes perfect sense. Almost everything that is successful or breaks down is as a result of a process.
jp
[…] this post by Jim Logan called Focus is the key to great B2B complex sales management he makes the great statement, “Riding your team to close more business is like yelling at a […]
[…] this post by Jim Logan called Focus is the key to great B2B complex sales management he makes the great statement, “Riding your team to close more business is like yelling at a […]