Sales
How To Exceed Sales Targets
by XPRESS,
09 November 2015
It would be hard to find a CEO who wouldn’t say that increasing revenue and reducing cost of sales is one of their top three or four goals,” says Jackie Quint, global director of sales enablement at Extreme Networks. In fact, 71% of C level executives say that sales productivity is critical for growth, according to “The Power of Enablement: Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap,” a recent report from Forbes Insights and Brainshark.
Yet the job of those in the C-suite is to see the big picture for the entire company. So they view the sales function through another lens in addition to revenue—how it helps to meet or exceed corporate goals and objectives. “CEOs fundamentally don’t want to hear about tools; they don’t care,” says Walter Rogers, CEO of CCI Global Holdings LLC. “They want to hear about how to connect their end-point vision, such as productivity or profitability, to a strategy.”
CEOs don’t want to hear about tools, but if you are in sales you better know all about them.
As selling gets more costly and buyers become more informed, sales productivity continues to present challenges for all companies. The Forbes Insights/Brainshark report compared how companies that exceed target sales, the winners, handle their sales and marketing, as compared to those companies that come in at or under their sales targets.
Here are four main areas that are key to why the winners exceed their sales targets:
1. Sales enablement is a potent formula for improving sales productivity (defined as revenue per rep). Companies succeed when the issue of sales enablement and sales productivity is top of mind for the management team. Sales enablement is a key focus for companies at the top of the productivity scale—59% of top-performing companies have a defined sales enablement role, as do 72% of all companies that report revenues more than 25% above plan.
When management pays attention to enabling their sales teams, it makes a real difference. The evidence is in the performance of “the rest” of the companies in the survey, or those not leading the way in sales. Only 30% of underperforming companies have a sales enablement role in their organizations.
2. Selling is about value. Because the buyer’s world has changed, and it is easier for people to research online before they even get to the point of contacting a salesperson, it is more challenging for salespeople to have high-value conversations and help the buyer on topics they haven’t already learned. There often is a disconnect between what the buyer expects and what the seller is able to deliver in a meeting.
Article Source: Forbes