Enterprise Sales Competitiveness

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For companies to accomplish enterprise sales success, they must realize that sales development is a complicated journey requiring multiple iterations of discernment within four primary areas that must function concurrently. Sales organizations must implement a robust revenue process that links their strategy, client persona, relationships, and the problem/solution approach to achieve business growth.

Knowing does not equal doing, whether in managing a sales team, or acting on an exclusive opportunity. There is a crucial difference between knowing a concept and its technical details and applying those concepts and details into action. The best sales organizations are very competent at observing, listening, and understanding what others do not and execute with confidence. Competencies are a coordinated bunch of habits—what we think, feel, and do to get a job done.

Having an intellectual understanding is a foundation process and necessary for learning, but not enough for sustainability. Deep change requires the restructuring of ingrained behavior, habits of thought, and reaction to feelings. While enthusiasm and a can-do attitude are helpful, they can only work to the degree that people have the underlying skills and learn the competencies to make them work. If you lack empathy or are socially inept or haven't learned to manage conflict or take a customer's perspective, sheer enthusiasm is not a replacement—and can lead to a well-intended failure.

Maintaining strong emotional intelligence skills based on its five elements: self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and adeptness in relationships determines the potential to establish the foundation of success in sales. Possessing high emotional intelligence does not guarantee a person will have learned the emotional competencies that matter for the workplace; it only means that they have excellent potential to learn them. A person might be highly empathic, for example, and yet not have learned the skills based on empathy that translate into superior customer service, or the ability to bring together a diverse work team. 

Emotional competencies cluster into groups, each based on a typical underlying emotional intelligence capacity. The underlying emotional intelligence capacities are vital if people are to master the skills necessary to excel in the workplace successfully. If, for example, they are deficient in social skills, they will be inept at persuading or inspiring others, or at leading teams and encouraging change. 

Organizations that implement emotional intelligence must come to terms with any deviation between the values they declare and those they live. Clarity about an organization's values, energy, and its mission statement leads to a decisive self-confidence in corporate decision making. Working in a company that measures its success in the most meaningful ways—not just the bottom line—is itself a moral and energy raiser. Knowing what shared values are required, and an assessment of the organizational strengths and weaknesses amounts to emotional self-awareness at the corporate level.

But few organizations evaluate themselves in this way. How many companies know where, incompetent managers infect their people with fear and rancor, or where untapped opportunities of the enterprise are among their salespeople? Many organizations think they are assessing through perceived levels of commitment or internal surveys of job satisfaction and the like. But these standard tools miss the mark. To what extent do these surveys assess emotional intelligence at the organizational level and open the possibilities in thinking about what makes an organization effective—and to ways of diagnosing performance regression.

Applying emotional intelligence is just one part of a two part story if an organization is going sustain and grow. Sustainable growth requires the blending of emotional intelligence skills applied in a discipline of eight critical success factors which will bring consistency in the sales revenue engine. A well thought out sales campaign never goes to plan therefore all sales teams must be adaptable and weave their sales strategy through the following critical success factors for ultimate success.

Critical Success Factors:

1. Ideal client personas that enable sales to qualify potential clients.

2. Understanding a client's buying criteria to discern progress.

3. Comprehensive relationship maps that address issues, concerns, and motivations of clients.

4. A competitive analysis of your competitors that documents their strategies and tactics.

5. Value Proposition Calculation that states compelling benefits to decision-makers.

6. Presentations need specific client issues with solutions that address all problem aspects.

7. Business qualification tool with metrics to ensure Sales consistently qualifies business. 

8. A structured sales process that can be measured throughout and maximizes the win-rate.

Accomplishing the attainment of a robust sales campaign that that utilizes emotional intelligence and applies the discipline inherent within the eight critical success factors has proven to deliver results such as:

· Reduced sales cycle times of more than 40%

· Improved win-rates up to 72%

· Reduction of sales expenses 35-65%

· Increased Total Contract Value on average deal won by 80%

Included in our offering is a comprehensive Revenue Assessment and Recommendation. We diagnose an organizations application of emotional intelligence and the sales discipline preventing revenue growth and determine the areas that are lagging against the eight critical success factors for revenue growth. 

Interview and analyze sales organization and business leaders to:

• Clarify the Sales Growth Problem and compare to the ideal condition of win-rates, document the Sales Variance
• Further, evaluate the Sales Growth Problem and identify the focus area of eight critical success factors and implement where the most significant benefit/improvement will be.  
• Set Objective – Identify Sales Variance and eliminated by a specific date 
• Determine Root Cause(s) – Analysis the deficiencies of the eight critical success factors
• Recommend Corrective and Preventative Actions

Interview and analyze sales organization and the sales team members: 

• Determine performance successes within the sales organization and develop it into a repeatable process
• Document areas of individual sales improvement 

Review sales playbook and qualification process and determine areas of improvement:

• Evaluate the Typical Identified Prospect of the Organization
• Determine the current state of the qualification process and tools used and identify areas for improvement

  - Documented qualifying process which will ensure consistency within the sales process
 

- The findings of structured interviews. It includes the assessment details of the eight critical success factors for Business Growth and the results from a Root-Cause Analysis. Within the report are the following artifacts to improve sales force effectiveness: 

• Sales emotional intelligence maturity assessment documenting win vulnerability
• Corrective and preventive initiatives to enhance revenue growth
• Implementation plan for achieving results
• The output from the assessment of each salesperson ranking them against the following eight criteria:

1. Positioning / Client Perception
2. Senior Level Relationships – Breadth & Depth
3. Account Plan / Strategy / Roadmap for Growth
4. Proactive / Consultative Behavior
5. Competitive Position
6. Pipeline Development
7. Account Management Leadership / Salesperson – Depth of Competencies 
8. Pursuit Plans

- A review of the current sales area playbook and document the overall process outlining key areas for improvement to create a sustainable process as follows.

• Understand your buyer personas and buyer decision process
• Sales process and planning (Flowchart sales process, Call approach, Value propositions statements and messaging, Discover call review, Pre-call checklist and call planning) 
• Qualification Process and Tools
• Qualification questions
• Tool review
• Provide a customized qualification tool

• A documented improvement approach that addresses sale problems and challenges vs. symptoms
• Access to a proven methodology to enable sales growth greater than 20%
• An implementable plan that can reduce sales expenses up to 35%
• An implementable plan to improve win-rates up 35%
• Connecting sales teams to the most relevant message for each opportunity in the client buying process
• Enabling salespeople to get the coaching they need and measure how effectively that coaching delivers bottom-line results
• Providing unique ways to present meaningful value to clients
• Position company to up-sell and cross-sell opportunities are available