Nearly every sales leader dreams of raising the bar. Being the one everyone else chases. Surpassing the records.
But only a few – the elite – actually do it.
Researchers recently looked at what separates the best sales leaders from the rest. Here’s what was revealed in the 2019 World-Class Sales Practices Study from CSO Insights, the research division of Miller Heiman Group.
First, the ‘Sales System’
The best don’t leave much – if anything – to chance. What they do and how they do it circles around and back to a well-defined vision.
According to Seleste Lunsford, the Chief Research Officer of CSO Insights:
The best sales organizations have a ‘sales system’ that aligns a range of components – functions, processes and strategies – around building and growing relationships with their clients.”
In the case of world-class sales organizations – and just 9% of all organizations reach this level – the sales system is the common link. All other factors – which follow here – feed into the success of the system.
1. Be consistent across channels
Most sales operations give customers options to connect, engage and do business. It’s an omni-channel experience – from phone calls, visits and text to websites, apps and online portals. But only the top sales organizations deliver seamless experiences at every touch point and with everyone involved.
So prospects and customers report it’s easy to navigate their websites, get responses to email, speak to salespeople, handle challenges with Service and renew business. And everyone knows what happened each time customers contacted the organization. Lunsford explained:
Despite all the moving parts, world-class sales organizations ensure customers enjoy a seamless experience among these various touch points and their expectations are met or exceeded regardless of when and where they engage.”
Keys to success:
- Map your sales journey – from awareness to purchase to loyalty – identifying all the touch points. Note how the interaction is most likely to take place – in-person, online, over the phone, via text, through social media, etc. – and who is likely involved. Then consider where there could be friction at each point.
- Measure the impact. Figure out how much weight each contact carries with customer satisfaction. For instance, customers probably care more that a salesperson is on-time and executes a meeting professionally than they care when an invoice arrives. Yes, both are vital to moving prospects along in the pipeline, but some have a bigger impact.
- Mix and max the touch points. Create, enhance or optimize a CRM system that logs every customer interaction and result of each. Of course, the system is only as good as the input – so reward people involved in the interactions for complying with guidelines on what needs to be added to your CRM system.
2. Make sales calls valuable to everyone
Ninety-one percent of top sales performers say they consistently have mutually valuable sales calls with prospects and customers. Yes, actual physical sales calls, which is a major part in why they stand out.
Sales calls are shorter, involve more email exchanges before the actual meeting, and are often done via screen. But the top sales performers get the meetings, gather and share relevant information that benefits buyer and seller.
So then the buyer walks away understanding how the salesperson will help them, with a sense of the salesperson’s credibility and where the relationship will go. The seller walks away understanding the specific problem and outcomes they must achieve in the budding relationships.
Keys to success:
- Prepare individually. Sales calls that are mutually valuable must be designed, prepared and practiced for each prospect based on what you’ve learned and the appropriate content based on that knowledge.
- Master variety. Sales pros who excel at giving perspective and insight during sales calls have a higher win rate than those who don’t go in armed with a variety of perspectives prospects can compare. Salespeople need a repeatable approach that can be customized for each meeting to add the right value.
- Tailor content. Salespeople can engage prospects and customers with the right content – tip sheets, presentation slides, demos, white papers, ebooks, etc. – at the right time. Sales and Marketing want to create the ultimate buyer enablement library so the right material is at the ready.
3. Align the message with needs
The top 93% of sales organizations have salespeople who deliver value messages that are immediately relevant to their prospects’ needs.
These salespeople clarify the value their solutions will bring to customers and how it will happen. They tailor value messages with prospects’ roles, problems, goals and the phases they’re in the sales journey.
For instance, top salespeople might have one solution for a prospect company’s issue, but build one value proposition for the CFO who is mostly centered on costs, another for the purchasing manager who is focused on efficiency, and another for the end-users who are focused on sustainability.
Keys to success:
- Create a pool of content. Value messages may need to vary at different points within the sales funnel. The early stage message may be more of a catch-all message. Later stage value messages and propositions need to focus on individual buyers.
- Make it easy for anyone involved in the sales process to grab and/or add content to the sales enablement tool. Train salespeople until they’re confident in using and sharing the content.
4. Align ideals
Ninety-five percent of the top sales performers say their marketing, sales and customer service teams agree on customers’ wants and needs. That helps them set and meet goals aligned with customers’ expectations, the study found.
Buyers often wish salespeople would focus on the post-sale relationship as much as they do on closing the sale, according to the Buyer Preference Study. Best-in-class organizations avoid silos and work together, keeping the customers’ needs and wants at the heart of everything they decide and do.
Keys to success:
- Collect, share and analyze information. Almost every organization collects data on customers. The top-selling organizations share and aim to learn from the data. So pull data from Sales, Marketing and Service. Survey. Host customer round tables. Create online communities. Then use all that data to work together to increase customer engagement and sales.
- Create and formalize cross-functional teams. You can improve experiences and sales when representatives from Sales, Marketing and Service are expected to work together, handle customers fluently and meet shared goals.
5. Align solutions
The best sales leaders don’t move forward without being aligned with the other closely tied disciplines such as Marketing, Operations, Customer Service and IT Support. More than 95% of top performers say that’s a given in their organization. Lunsford said:
World-Class sales organizations … use proactive alignment of these functions to provide more consistent deliverables and experiences for their front-line sales teams.”
For instance, when top-performing sales operations experience a dip in a key performance such as win rate, each discipline may have a solution. Marketing may have a sales enablement enhancement to help. Sales may call for training. And Customer Success may want to ramp up follow-through tactics.
Implemented separately, the plans are destined to crash and burn. Implemented with alignment and a new, integrated approach will improve win rate.
Keys to success:
- Stand alone, work together. In an attempt to align, some organizations put all the disciplines involved in the sales process under one leader’s umbrella. But when each discipline stands alone, it can bring a different perspective and unique scope of responsibility to the sales process. Also, no one problem can derail the entire operation.
- Collaborate and communicate with formality. When each discipline stands alone, it’s critical they share a common, formal way to work together and consistently communicate. Leaders want to provide regular (even daily) updates and feedback on their groups’ progress. Groups need to meet regularly to identify gaps and make adjustments, plus create common goals and accountability for reaching them.
6. Plan your calls
In most organizations, a third of salespeople’s time is spent actually selling and 20% is spent on call planning. In the elite groups, salespeople spend more time preparing for calls so their limited time on calls and following up is spent more effectively.
The key: Top organizations don’t just provide salespeople with tools to plan calls, opportunities, pricing and accounts, they coach extensively so salespeople use the tools effectively.
Keys to success:
- Pick the right tool. Call planning tools don’t need to be technologically advanced to be effective. Checklists and templates work. CRM tools and artificial intelligence applications can help. Pick what’s right for your team’s experience and prospecting expectations.
- Connect the tools to a method. Make sure the tool and your selling expectations align. Build a planning process that is lined up with behaviors you want to reinforce.
- Be flexible. Not all sales calls need massive amounts of planning. Determine which types of calls – perhaps late-stage calls or any with high-stakes prospects – require in-depth, pre-call, documented work. Also define which calls – perhaps early-stage or less-likely opportunities – require less call planning (because the effort isn’t worth the potential ROI).
7. Forecast with rigor
Similar to extensive planning, top sales leaders have a rigorous forecasting process. What sets them apart from less successful sales professionals is that their process consistently leads to high levels of forecast accuracy.
More than 80% say their forecasting success is a result of manager involvement, using both historical and predictive data and getting the most of their existing technologies (note: they don’t necessarily invest more in new technology) and serious structure to the system.
Keys to success:
- Set the cadence. Define the cadence to review salespeople’s funnel progress in time to adjust if necessary and minimize the chances they’ll use outdated or duplicate information to make any decisions. Also create cadence for the regular review meetings: Who will attend? When? What is the objective? What data will we review? Which goals will we adjust?
- Leverage more data. The top sales professionals use historical, subjective and predictive – generated with algorithms to calculate the health of a lead – to forecast.
8. Leverage data
Most sales organizations have many different technology tools – an average of 10! But quantity doesn’t equate to quality. Many sales leaders don’t manage the data (they let IT take over), and some of those who do, don’t manage it well.
Almost 90% of top sales leaders are responsible for their data and analyzing it. They use data to design sales and territory models, build talent profiles, optimize pricing, design customer experiences, streamline coaching and more.
Keys to success:
- Decide the data to use. You can gather all the data possible, but not all of it is equal or some isn’t even valuable. Gather and reflect on data that can help you make the best decisions to run a more successful sales operation. Stop collecting and analyzing data that justifies what you do. Look for data that challenges the status quo (and act on it!)
- Look beyond your data. Researchers find that not all the data relevant to sales is in the CRM system. Best-practice sales leaders look at other systems that might have data they can use – such as Fulfillment, Service and Finance. Identify the data you need and align it with yours for a more well-rounded view of sales operations and success.
9. Develop customer-facing professionals
Best-in-class sales operations never stop evolving. Ninety percent of them boast a culture where their customer-facing employees continually develop. They promote group learning, individual growth and employee-driven change.
Keys to success:
- Commit to development. Leaders need to spearhead cultural change and commitment. Include development in one-on-one employee discussions and as part of their job expectations. Focus more on career growth and strategy and less on individual tasks. Lead by example: Share and prove your personal commitments to development.
- Find creative development opportunities. Not all customer-facing professionals aspire to be in management or make history. So climbing the traditional corporate ladder won’t motivate them. You might inspire sales professionals with development opportunities. Let them pilot technology tools, get involved in product development, try a new market approach or join a cross-functional team.
10. Coach for improvement
Just 33% of all sales professionals say they effectively coach their salespeople to perform better. A full 90% of the world-class sales pros say they get the job done. Lunsford said:
World-class sales organizations have a formal coaching process. Sales managers are trained and required to coach their sellers. They are provided coaching guidelines, tools and an approach to measure success.”
Keys to success:
- Define coaching. Professional sports coaches don’t wing it – and neither should sales leaders. Your coaching approach should include a variety of approaches to cover account strategy, individual skill development, call technique and developing a personal sales style.
- Run it from top-down. Truly successful coaching efforts are backed by an executive initiative. You can sell a coaching program with research (like the 33% vs. 90% mentioned above), data on sales lost to un-coached salespeople, recorded failed calls and excerpts from salespeople’s exit interviews. With their support, run a pilot coaching program led by leaders who are already talented coaches, track results and gather success stories.
11. Fill the talent pipeline
Almost 85% of top-performing sales leaders know who they need to achieve success. They have a system to find, grow and engage the right talent. They’re on a constant lookout to keep their team staffed optimally to reach goals.
Keys to success:
- Stay ahead of the pace. Top sales organizations hire “to a future-pacing profile vs. trying to hire people who fit the mold of (their) current organization,” researchers found. Look at what makes your best salespeople tick. Find the true differentiator – often a trait such as learning agility or adversity tolerance.
- Measure the strategy. Track success in hiring. Check vitals such as vacancy rates, time to fill positions, positions filled from within vs. those filled outside the organization. Then use that data, plus feedback from customers and new hires, exit interviews and personal one-on-ones to refine your hiring focus.
12. Assess what makes your best the best
Most organizations don’t know why their best salespeople are successful. According to Lunsford:
Instead, ‘top-performing’ status is assigned on the basis of making quota.”
However, 85% of best-in-class sales organizations know what drives individual and operational success because they regularly assess what’s working and what isn’t. They use the insight to improve hiring, coaching, development and sales planning to align with customer expectations.
Keys to success:
- Better define “top performer.” Do more than label people who meet quota as your top performers. Here’s why: The goal-achievers may not be the kind of salespeople you want to replicate. Some salespeople are at the top because they have a longtime client with a locked-in contract. Others are high-maintenance divas who drain the spirit from others. True top-performing salespeople tend to be those who do their work with persistence and a positive attitude. They develop unique approaches and take feedback to drive success.
Where do you start?
Lunsford said in the research:
As leaders think about how to evolve their sales systems, it’s important to remember that it is not a linear process.There is no one right starting place … The sales system is a constant work in progress – as it should be, because it is based on the customer, and customers don’t stand still.”
What to do
Researchers suggest these strategies:
- Periodically put your operations under a microscope. Compare yourself against your own and industry best-practices. Consider the positive – perhaps revenue or market share – and negative – warning signs of shifts you aren’t yet prepared to handle.
- Take in the big picture; narrow the focus. You don’t need to improve every aspect of your sales system. Some of these world-class strategies don’t pertain to you. Others won’t give you an advantage. Act on what makes sense for you.
- Prioritize. Once you decide what to do, don’t plan to do everything at once. Pick a couple of strategies to improve. As you pound out your plans, keep the customer’s profile, sales journey and satisfaction in focus.
- Move with intent. A slow and gradual approach to improve is easy to manage, but you won’t change as fast as customers expect or before the need to change again!
- Prepare for the consequences. Change will likely affect other systems, processes and workflows. Prepare others for adjustments that will likely need to be made.
- Shape the culture. The success of change depends on the culture that supports it. Create or build on a culture where every move to improve the sales operation is based on one thing: the customer perspective.
