What are the Key Issues resolved through Head of Sales/CRO assist?
Working back from right-to-left, we inspect the performance of the sales team in all areas of the buyer's journey from initial interest, mutual discovery, confirmation of value alignment, comparison to alternatives, negotiation of terms & conditions, pricing and packaging, and contracting with expectations of on-boarding to first impact of value.
In each of the sales stages, we are measuring performance with best-practices of peer performance and implementing changes through small, incremental sprints designed to empower change and gain visible results correlated with actions.
These internal actions are documented in the operating playbook for consistent, predictable performance from the sales team and serve as a unification element across customer engagements in the sales cycle. This is ideal for on-boarding new sales team members for faster ramp-to-productivity and cross-training with other functions for a consistent brand experience.
Only a few sellers are at plan | Great month/qtr followed by miss | Too many slips |
Not enough leads | Getting ghosted | Poor quality leads |
Stalled decisions | Not enough meetings | Loss to competitors |
Not enough pipeline coverage | Accountability for results is absent | Missing attainment action-plan |
Inadequate training to perform as expected | No common deal language | Win/Loss ratio is less than 20% |
Aggressive discounting and panic closing actions | Meeting agenda management | Ineffective negotiating outcomes |
Missed bookings call for period | Unable to forecast for current period | Rapid loss of forecast revenue at end of period |
Struggle in bridging gap to plan | Inability to forecast following future quarter | Inconsistent alignment of sales cycle and forecasted booking |
Behind in year-to-date bookings | Insufficient pipeline quality & quantity | Unable to evidence quota alignment with actual production capability |
Reliance on key opportunities each period to make plan | Managing too many low-quality opportunities | Use of subjective terms in forecasting booking attainment |
What are the attributes of previously won opportunities? What were the discrete stages throughout the sales process? Mapping these actions and steps set the foundation of common language when discussing opportunities and related revenue forecasting as not all opportunities are equal; some are statiscally higher candidates for closing within the sales cycle at known contract values.
Building on the attributes of successfully closed-won opportunities, a common language is developed when describing individual opportunities for risk-profiling and related prioritization of efforts & resources. Pipeline reviews provide clear insight to opportunity health and forecast status based on known criteria of what is required (or must-happen) for this opportunity to close and book as contract at the deployment date.
Using a common opportunity language across the organziational functions allows marketing, product, customer-success, finance, and executive teams to understand and communicate expectations in booking and revenue values relative to time periods, increasing stakeholder confidence in the value-creation production and delivery.