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?