I often get asked to talk about my best year in sales. If I’m honest I think this is a rather self-obsessed question. As a career salesperson, I look at ‘my best year’ only as a benchmark I have set myself so I can aim to better it the next year. For me, the important question that should be asked is ‘what was my foundation so I could give myself the opportunity to have my best year in sales?’
For me, the important question that should be asked is ‘what was my foundation so I could give myself the opportunity to have my best year in sales?’
In this post, I will break down what I believe are the foundational pillars that make up a salesperson’s Go To Market. If you follow these you should have a great year.
1. Know your numbers, lead streams and what value they represent
Leads are always a hot topic – most are outbound, some are inbound. Job 1 is understanding how many leads you need and where these leads are coming from? How much outbound activity do I need to do? How many leads can I rely on marketing for? What campaigns do I need to put in place with marketing to generate leads? How many leads can partners bring me? What campaigns can I run with partners?
Job 2 is analysing the data to understand what your Average sales cycle is, vs close rate vs Average order value. Using these high-level stats you will be able to determine the lead status of your business and thus how much business you will close.
2. It’s a Team sport & Teams win deals
If you are lucky to work for a supportive & collaborative business, use your internal team to help you close deals. Some examples that work for me are:
A) Create peer to peer relationships with senior stakeholders
B) Use thought leaders to evangelise into your prospect for you
C) Conduct regular deal reviews with both your manager and your peers. They will see things you miss!
3. Pipeline Generation, Pipeline Generation Pipeline Generation.
Regardless of how strong your pipeline is you MUST do PG on a daily business. Some businesses do this 2 days a week, some do it as a ‘call-out day’. For me, PG needs to be a daily activity. Every day I do a minimum of 2 hours PG regardless of what I am doing or have lined up. If you follow this metric you will generate leads and eventually close business.
4. Know what you are talking about
Understand how your product can help fix business challenges or create business opportunities for your customer. This doesn’t mean learning the speeds and feeds but more so the top-level problems it may help fix and where it sits in the wider marketplace and their industry.
I always ask my new customers why they bought from me. The most common answer I get is “Vaseem – you got it! You understood what I was looking to achieve and presented a solution that was able to help”. I find being honest about what it can’t help with also is very important.
I always ask my new customers why they bought from me. The most common answer I get is “Vaseem – you got it! You understood what I was looking to achieve and presented a solution that was able to help”. I find being honest about what it can’t help with also is very important.
An example would be quantifying a problem. A customer may have a problem that is business-critical to them – If I can help with 80% of that problem what would that mean? What is that 80% worth?
5. Wall of standards
I personally set myself benchmarks or levers for what I consider success looks like. I appreciate you can’t go in every day expecting to close business. BUT what you can do is try to give yourself the best chance to be successful.
For example; daily KPI’s I may set myself are spending 2 hours on client-facing activity a day, setting up 1 meeting, sending out 1 proposal – This may not directly result in a deal but it’s creating the environment to give me the best chance of being successful.
I can then work with my boss to understand close rates and volume of deals needed. I.e. hypothetical target is £5K – AOV is £1K but close rate is 30% means at any time I need a minimum of 17 deals to give myself a good chance of getting to goal, https://metricdrivenselling.com/sales-planning-for-success-part-2/ would help you understand the metrics.
By knowing ‘my numbers’ I can then work with my boss to improve things like ‘average order value’ and close rates. By sticking to these ‘ wall of standards’ I am creating an environment where I am ‘making my own luck’.
I hope this helps any salesperson who is looking to be more organised in how they build their sales GTM. Feel free to reach out to me on vkhan@live.co.uk