Sales leadership and acceleration
Companies want to accelerate through the sales process to capture market share and generate revenue as fast as possible. Revenue can get delayed if the correct structure, resources and experience need to be hired and onboarded into the company.
i²s².tech sales acceleration framework
Validation of customer challenges
Solving problems with definitive value
Staying ahead of competition
Underpinned product sales strategies
Executable
Opportunity discovery process
Pipeline management & conversion
Profitable & repeatable sales
Sales acceleration
A real sales opportunity with high probability to convert to revenue follows a time-line associated with the customers market and product life cycles. Driving and tracking opportunities through the sales stage with the relevant timings enables better predictability of revenue conversion. The i²s².tech sales process focuses on external activities and driving progression through definitive sales stages.
Definition and selection of target customers
Marketing awareness campaigns
Sales collateral
Demonstrable value propositions
Clear commercial strategy
Direct and indirect sales channels
Opportunity discovery process
Prospect identification and connection
Prospect engagement with solution introduction
Customer optimised follow-up
Creation of customer sponsorship
Opportunity creation (trial project)
Opportunity qualification
Pipeline management & conversion
Delivering "say-do" factor proof points
Quotation process
Quotation feedback and optimisation
Negotiation and closing
Product commercial contracts
Ramp-up readiness
First volume orders
Profitable and repeatable sales
Customer ramp-up support
Mass production phase
Forecast and supply chain management
Optimisation of costs
Margin management
Differentiating customer service
Sales budgets and KPI's
Pre-sales process
Sales execution - 10 sales stages
Go-To-Market
Plans
Executable
Go-To-Market
Plans
Pre-sales process
The pre-sales process overalps with the ideation and innovation cycle. It is an internal activity between business development, sales and engineering to ensure that the company is ready to start the sales promotion phase.
Validation of customer challenges
Sales and business development are responsible for clearly defining the customer challenges to be solved. This information needs to be accurate, detailed and constantly updated. The sources of information used to define the challanges needs to have integrity and be highly relevant. Ideally, external inputs come from "heads of departments" within the customers. The challenges should be well documented and time stamped as it is easy to lose track of inputs and new information.
Solving problems with definitive value
Once the challenges are articulated, target specifications need to be agreed with engineering. These specifications should not only solve the problem but add significant value to ensure you can break-in to the customer and displace an incumbent supplier. This process will rely on extensive competition analysis and benchmarking. Claimed value vs. competitors will needed to be demonstrateable.
Staying ahead of competition
Being able to demonstrate definitive value to customers with evidence is paramount ("say do factor"). A decision by a customer to change supplier is big and has risks for their business. In addition to solving the challenge, sales and business development need to also look for coupling and integration strategies. What else can be added to the solution that has not already been done? This could be a new service or support function or an innovative new commercial business model.
Underpinned product sales strategies
Underpinned product sales strategies are the playbook of how and why you will win. They require full alignment across engineering, business development and sales to avoid any false starts or set backs in the sales acceleration phase. Target customers should be nominated and agreed. Sales collateral needs to be ready for those first impactful sales presentations.
Engaging i²s².tech fractional CRO, VP of Sales services gives the immediate injection of sales skills to ensure your unique value proposition gets traction in the market and maximises commercial return. When engaged, we implement and follow a proven and structured sales process.