The team at McKinsey and Company evaluated the results of over 700 sales projects and identified the companies that consistently delivered industry-leading sales performance, that is companies which grew their revenues an average of 48% faster and their EBITA 80% faster than their peer groups over a five year period.
What were their common characteristics? It turns out that size, geography and what they sold had little effect on performance. It was how they sold which drove the differences.
Here are the five common strategies which McKinsey determined characterized the top performers:
They found growth where their competitors could not. Top-performing sales organizations tended to both look far ahead – an average of 10 quarters – and uncover growth opportunities in the near term. Perhaps most telling, top performing sales organizations practiced micro-segmentation. They divided their potential markets into as many as 100 or more cells and identified areas where significant growth potential existed even when the overall market growth appeared slow or stagnant.
Key take-away: take a look at your current approach to market segmentation and targeting. Are you looking at a sufficiently granular level to identify the pockets of segment-leading growth potential?
They sold the way their customers wanted to buy. There’s no excuse any more for basing your sales process and sales pipeline stages around sales activities, rather than stages in the buying decision process, and the results of the top sales performers validate this strategy. In a striking validation of the “Challenger Sale” philosophy, McKinsey also pointed out that top performers focused their attention on the prospects for which they had something original to offer.
Key take-away: even if it means dramatically restructuring the way you manage your marketing and sales processes and pipelines, you must refocus your efforts on understanding, tracking and facilitating your prospect’s buying decision process.
They freed up their sales people to sell. Sales people in the top-performing sales organizations tended to spend far more of their time on customer-facing front-line sales activities rather than wasteful back office administration, and it’s no accident that these organizations used technology and process as key weapons to make their sales people more productive.
Key take-away: look carefully at what your sales people are currently spending their time doing, and systematically eliminate or offload any tasks that are not directly contributing to the customer sales experience.
They focused on developing their people. The top-performing sales organizations not only recruited thoughtfully, they also implemented induction programmers that served to turn “rookies into rainmakers” far faster and more effectively than their competitors. They established a tempo for reporting and targeted intervention that helped the sales people with potential to realize that potential faster. They inoculated the whole sales organization with the winning habits of their top performers, and they refused to leave new hires to “sink or swim”.
Key take-away: the consequences of making a bad hire are horribly expensive. First, make sure that you recruit for attitude and not just experience. Then, involve every new hire in a carefully crafted skills transfer, induction and mentoring program.
They expected exceptional performance. The top performing sales organizations drove growth from the top. They set stretching targets, challenged the status quo, established role models, and created a culture that expected results. The pains they took to equip their sales people to be successful were balanced with the expectation that their sales people would succeed, and persistent poor performance was constructively addressed.
Key take-away: if you have taken pains to establish a winning environment (and only if you have), and invested in recruiting and developing the right team, it is reasonable to expect your sales people to rise to the challenge.
So there you have it: five winning strategies which have driven exceptional results for the organizations that have put them into practice. Together, they make a smarter approach to accelerating revenue growth. It should be noted: none of these winning habits require huge budgets or large staffs. All they require is smart thinking, focus, discipline and willpower. So if your organization hasn’t yet put every one of these principles into practice, what’s holding you back?
.
.
.
This article was originally posted by Bob Apollo in the Inflexion Point Blog on June 12, 2012
.
.
.
