It’s not uncommon for sales revenue to slide.
It happens to all sales organizations at one time or another. Revenue being down isn’t the most difficult problem. Knowing why revenue is declining, where to look for revenue gaps, and how to increase revenue is the biggest challenge. This post will lay out the four key sales levers Chief Sales Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, and Heads of Sales should be analyzing when their revenue is on the slide.
4 Levers for Revenue Growth
When sales are down there are only 4 growth levers leadership can pull to improve sales performance and increase revenue growth. That’s it. Knowing what these levers of growth are and how the organization is faring in each of them can be the difference between sales growth or a further plummet.
Misaligned Initiatives Undermine Sales Performance
When sales are down, organizations have a tendency to run around throwing shit against the wall hoping something sticks. The pressure to perform is huge and when revenue growth stalls, the pressure is ratcheted up. Too often, reactive, misaligned, and ineffective initiatives are put in place, rarely yielding the desired effects.
The best way to avoid this chaos is to focus on the 4 growth levers that matter: strategy, structure, people, and process. Breaking your sales team into these manageable sections ensures alignment and focus.
Each of these sales levers represents the critical parts of the sales process and are the only areas leadership can control to improve sales performance and increase revenue growth.
Strategy
What’s the go to market strategy? What strategy/strategies are you executing to? Do the strategies map to the stated goals. Are they creative and provide a competitive advantage? Has the strategy taken into consideration the market opportunities and competitive challenges? Does it clearly lay out the direction or the current state/future state? Do you have a sales growth strategy?
Take a look at your strategy. Is it still relevant and aligned with revenue growth goals? Are you executing to it well? Do you have one at all? Is it working? Does it need to be adjusted? Is it still aligned with the market trends and opportunities? Is it big enough? Ask yourself, do you have the right growth strategy in place to be successful.
If the strategy is wrong, if the strategy is not aligned with the market, if you don’t have a strategy or you are executing it poorly, your probability for success is very low. The strategy is how you are leveraging your resources, your people, the processes, capital and more. When sales are falling, take a look at your sales strategy. Put it through the ringer and make sure it’s the right one.
Structure
Structure follows strategy. The structure is the frame for strategy; it’s what gives it strength. If the structure doesn’t support the strategy, everything comes tumbling down. Structure acts as one of the critical sales levers, defining how the organization is set up – it’s services, inside sales, outside sales, sales engineers, sales operations, sales enablement, etc. Structure comprises of the components that drive the sales strategy and allows for execution.
If the structure isn’t aligned with the strategy or is poorly constructed—for example, needing inside sales but only having outside sales, or requiring hunting teams but building farming teams—you’re in trouble. Step back and evaluate your current structure. Does it map to the strategy? Is it optimized to drive growth levers like efficiency and scalability? Is there anything missing? Comp plans are also part of structure. Do your comp plans support your strategy? How well does your structure contribute to achieving your goals through these levers of growth?
Take the time to evaluate your organization’s structure. Map it to the needs of the strategy. Ensure it’s designed in a way that supports the strategy and empowers execution. Structure is too often overlooked, yet it is one of the critical revenue levers for driving success.
People
This is the biggest lever of growth for sales organizations, period. Having the right people in the right roles is, without a doubt, the greatest challenge to sales organizations. It’s people who have to execute, and if they don’t, nothing happens. Therefore, if the people lever isn’t correct, nothing else matters.
The key here is to make sure you have the right people. Do you have the right skill sets performing the right roles? Do you have the right cultural fit? Do you have the people you need to execute the strategy effectively? Understanding this with confidence is critical, as the people lever directly impacts all other growth levers.
Taking the time to evaluate the team and determine whether you have the right people in the right roles could be the single most effective action you take for success. Build a tool that allows you to measure the team in relation to your goals and sales strategy. Take an inventory of the type of skills required to execute effectively, then rate the entire team across those skills.
Know how well positioned your people are for success and identify any skill gaps. This knowledge will provide you with a roadmap for addressing deficiencies and building on strengths. Optimizing the people lever will ensure you avoid developing a talent gap and support all the other sales levers necessary for success.
Process
To keep everything running smoothly, maintain velocity and efficiency, and ensure the team is operating effectively, processes must be optimized. A lack of effective processes is like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears. Bad processes can undermine execution, increase costs, upset customers, delay time to market, and disrupt revenue growth.
No matter how strong your strategy, how sound your structure, or how talented your people are, if your process lever isn’t performing, you’re leaving money on the table.
Take a hard look at your processes. What does your sales process look like? Does it align with your buyers’ buying process? How solid is your pipeline meeting process? Do you have a coaching process or cadence? Is it working effectively?
Evaluate every aspect of your processes, including your people development process, lead management process, lead follow-up, and lost deal process. Are you maximizing the sales levers of strategy, structure, and people with efficient, results-driven processes?
Implementing light, functional, and effective processes is like adding nitrous to your car—boom! Take the time to evaluate and refine your current processes to ensure they align with your strategy, support your structure, and empower your people. Optimizing this critical growth lever can drive efficiency, execution, and ultimately, revenue growth.
Grade Your Sales Strategy and Structure
Sales leaders can address the strategy. They can redo the structure. They can hire, fire, or fix the people. They can implement new processes or get rid of the old bad ones. That’s it folks. The best way to manage a sales organization is to manage it across these four categories. It’s to keep a score card on each of the pillars and continually measure them.
Step back and look at your sales organization. What is your strategy? Now, grade it. Does your structure support the strategy? Now, grade it. Look at your people, are they the right team? Are the right people in the right roles? Grade them. How effective are your processes? Do they enable growth? Do they empower and accelerate? Grade them.
Start running your business along these 4 levers of growth. They are the only levers you can pull to make your number, so you’re better off knowing where you stand ahead of time. Because, if things go bad, that’s where you’ll go to fix em.
If you or your sales team need help improving your close rates or avoiding these common sales mistakes reach out to our sales team to learn more.
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