You're In Good Company

CEOs, GMs, company Presidents, Board Directors and senior marketing and sales leaders often wrestle quietly with questions about strategy, markets, sales and marketing. 

Strategy & Board Operations

• Do we have the right revenue growth expertise on the board/in our skills matrix?
• What competitive threats are likely to emerge in several years, particularly from alternative solutions?
• What technology threatens our business?
• What trends are likely to weaken / strengthen competitors?
• Have we properly defined our ICP for our strategy?
• Are pricing and product roadmap properly aligned with strategy?
• What should we be doing now to prepare for succession? Exit?
• What acquisitions should we consider?
• Does our return on equity justify the hassles?
• What leadership will we need to plan for in succession to meet growing market demands?
• Is the executive team capable of driving predictable revenue growth
• Do we deliver buyer experiences commensurate with market expectations?
• If the economy is in a recession, will we still sell as much? enough? 
• Are our marketing and sales teams as "world-class" as our manufacturing?
• Are we too reliant on existing customers for revenue?

Marketing

• Why don't we get more leads? How many leads should our website generate?
• How do we get more leads?
• Why don't we sell more of the leads we receive?
• Should we do more social media?
• How can we create more content? What content should we create?
• How important is SEO? Is ours good? What results should we see?
• How much should we spend on marketing?
• Is our website effective? Is our traffic appropriate?
• What should our email marketing include?
• Are we in the right trade shows? 
• What is our return on marketing spend? Why don't we know more accurately?

Sales

People

Managers

• Do we have the right sales leaders and managers?
• Do they have any blind spots? How would we know?
• What management coaching do they get?
• Who/what are they accountable to?
• What metrics do you use to measure them?
• Do they coach enough?
• Is our span of control (number of reps/manager) appropriate?
• Should managers carry quota?

Sales reps

• Do we have the right people? Right number? Right roles?
• Why do so many miss quota consistently?
• Do we believe they can get better?
• Does our team have the capacity to improve? Sell more? Improve margins? Gain market share?
• Who would have to change in order to improve?
• What percent of our people really have fire in their bellies?
• Are our reps proactive? or reactive?
• What's preventing them from being proactive?
• Why are we so frustrated with our sales team?
• Which of our salespeople will continue to sell successfully in a recession?
• Do the reps have clear activity and accountability expectations? Are they meeting those expectations?
• What's keeping them from doing more?
• Is everyone on the team held accountable?
• What's the potential of each of our reps? How many are hitting that?
• How can you measure their individual strengths and weaknesses?
• Is customer service considered sales?
• What are the most common reasons/justifications/excuses you hear from sales why they don't bring in new business or hit quota?

Recruiting & Hiring

- why is turnover so high? - why do so few sales candidates work out - is our onboarding adequate? - where do we make hiring mistakes? What part of the process is at fault? - do we know how to improve recruiting and hiring? - if your top sales person resigned today, do you know how you'd replace him/her? - how long between starting to recruit and having a new rep revenue positive? what's the cost of that time lag

Process & Methodology

- do we have a formal process? - are steps confirmed in the CRM? - what steps in process are they measured on? - why do so many deals get stuck in the pipeline - how many pipelines do you have? existing up/cross sell? new account? different products? - at what stage in process do most accounts drop off - why don't our people book more meetings? - why don't our people create more projects - do we compete effectively against all competitors? including industry giants? - do we know what it would take to compete against the giants? - what's teh value proposition? can all of your reps articulate it? - how many have an elevator pitch? - How do you differentiate from competitors? - What questions is your team trained to ask? - do they sell value? tell me more - do they sell consultatively? - how deep do they go? how many questions do they ask? do they understand the compelling reasons someone would buy?

Training & Coaching

- Do we train enough. when did you last have formal sales training? - which people are trainable? which resist? - what percent of their time do you managers spend coaching? - experience tells me they probably focus on pricing, quotes and technical features? is that fair? so not so much on precall planning, post call debrief, tactical sales, role playing, motivating? - how is coaching structured? - how do they decide what each rep needs specific coaching on? - do they know the real strengths and weaknesses? - who's improving? who's not? why? - what have you done to hold them accountable? - how do you measure the impact and effectiveness of coaching? training? - do you know whop's most open to coaching? would it help to know this? - do reps have territory and account management plans? how often are they reviewed? what happens if they're falling behind? - are the plans meaningful roadmaps? - do your managers know what motivates each rep and how motivated they are?

Compensation

• Do we pay enough?
• Are you paying reps not to work?
• Are our incentives driving results?
• How can we understand what incentives will motivate which people?
• How is compensation structured?

Target Accounts

• Do we have a properly identified list of target accounts?
• Do we have clearly defined expectations for our reps' activity in those accounts?
• Do marketing and sales collaborate on target account outreach?

New Logos

• Why does so much of our sales come from existing accounts?
• Do we have the right expectations for prospecting and new account projects?
• What's a new account worth/year?
• How many do we need to hit growth targets?
• What happens if you don't hit targets?
• How many does each rep need to hit their target?

Forecasts

• Why is our forecast often so innacurate?
• Why do so many deals end in no decision?
• What complications do inaccurate forecasts cause in production and planning?

KPIs

• What marketing and sales metrics should we track?
• Can we track all the KPIs we want to? If not, why?
• How often are KPIs reported? Are they public within the company?
• What's our closed/won rate?
• How long is our sell cycle?
• What percent of business is new logo business vs. repeat?
• What's our market share? How much have we gained annually for the last five years?
• If we haven't gained significantly, do we know why not?
• What are our costs & roi? cost/lead, cost/sales meeting, cost/opportunity, cost of customer acquisition, average deal size/margin/net, lifetime value/customer (reorders, spareparts, etc.)

Technology

• What CRM should we use?
• Is it correctly configured?
• Why don't our sales people use CRM?
• Are sales pipelines clearly outlined according to our process? 
• Is opportunity qualification built in?
• What do prospects and customers have to do to reach us? Can they text? Chat? Call?