5 Signs You Have the Wrong Sales Strategy in Your Business

Sales strategy is different from a sales methodology or process, but the most critical element missing from a business struggling to meet revenue goals.?

My journey in sales experience covers more than 20 years, during which I've worked with diverse businesses. However, it’s my experience with B2B startups over the last 11 years that truly opened my eyes to the significance of this topic.?

I’ve learned through many tough lessons competing against well-established global competitors as an Australian startup strategy matters, and without an effective one:

• Sales don’t close
• Salespeople churn
• Businesses die a slow death
• Employee morale is lowered
• Businesses cannot scale

Let’s look at the difference between Strategy, Methodology and Process.

Sales Strategy

• Definition: Sales strategy is the high-level plan outlining how a business will sell its products or services to achieve its sales goals. It's focused on identifying the target market, the value proposition, and the competitive advantage.
• Focus: It includes decisions about market positioning, target customer segments, pricing models, and overall goals. It’s about the "what" and "why" of selling.

Sales Methodology

• Definition: A sales methodology is the framework or philosophy that guides how a sales team approaches each step of the sales process. It’s more about the "how" of executing sales.
• Focus: Methodologies might include specific approaches like Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, Challenger Sales, etc., each with its own principles for interacting with prospects, handling objections, and closing deals.

Sales Process

• Definition: The sales process is the set of specific, repeatable steps your sales team follows to convert a prospect into a customer. It’s the tactical execution part, detailing each stage of a sale from initial contact to closing.
• Focus: This might include stages like prospecting, qualification, needs assessment, solution presentation, objection handling, and closing. It's very practical and often tailored to the specifics of the company or even the product/service being sold.

In summary, the sales strategy sets the overall objectives and goals, the sales methodology defines the approach or philosophy in achieving these goals, and the sales process outlines the specific actions and steps to be taken.?

Each plays a crucial role of an effective sales organisation and needs to be aligned for optimal results.

5 signs you are missing or have the wrong sales strategy

1. Sales aren't closing consistently.

When we weren’t closing clients, we discovered we didn’t have the right sales strategy.?

We weren’t deliberately aiming to create a competitive advantage in every sale while simultaneously creating demand for our solution throughout the entire buying process.?

I learned as a sale progresses, many things change, like…

• What is valuable to the buyer
• Distraction of other priorities
• Advantages/disadvantages of competitors
• Speed humps and roadblocks that derail a sale

I was and still am a big proponent of the Challenger Sale methodology. Although we challenged our potential client's assumptions about the ideal solution on many levels, it wasn’t enough to close sales.

We needed a specific, repeatable strategy to pre-plan and account for possible issues that could derail a sale.?

Once we created the right approach, everything began to change almost overnight.?

2. You aren't leading a buyer through the sale

If you don’t have a strategy to lead a client in your sales process, they either lead you, or no one is leading.?

No wonder the sale doesn’t happen right…

But here is the catch: You need to lead them through their buying decision-making journey, which requires you to become a subject matter expert on this specific topic.?

Unfortunately, most sellers never consider this and only try to lead them through their own internal sales processes, which has limited impact.?

This is often reflected in the stages of a sales pipeline.

Once I discovered there is an absolutely repeatable buying process all buyers go through, I was able to unpack the specific stages for my target audience and create the proper sales process to match, articulate the correct value at the right time and lead them towards a sale.?

This has reduced sales cycles by upward of 60% while increasing revenue per deal.?

3. You continually check in with no real game plan

This happens a lot…A potential client seems excited about your solution, and they ask for you to check back in with them in a week.

That week turns into a month, which turns into three, which turns into a dead sale.?

This can happen after a demo in particular.?

A common reason for this is they can’t see the real value of the solution and how it will apply to their business. Also, the decision maker may not know the problem entirely.

Indecision or no decision is the result in many cases. A strategy is needed here to remove this common enemy.?

4. Many proposals submitted without many wins

Many sellers will submit a proposal in an attempt to close the sale.?

Buyers also ask for a proposal to get out of meetings and have no intention of buying.?

This can be a real problem for businesses where it takes considerable time to create a them.

Instead,, the right strategy should provide indicative pricing early.?

As they work through the process, pricing is tightened up, and the final proposal is more of a confirmation of the work previously done.

Win rates should be closer to 90%+ with this approach.

5. Competing too much on price

If a business doesn’t have an effective strategy that helps the buyer quantify its problems and current processes, it will often need to compete on price.

Before we started working together, one of my clients was discounting up to 70% to match a competitor because of a lack of strategy.?

Once we addressed this, they increased the average contract value by more than 60% with very little effort.?

How to find the right strategy for your business

A significant challenge that stops a business from finding the right strategy is a fundamental misunderstanding of the first principles of sales.?

This is understandable since they are rarely spoken about.?

This article I previously wrote goes further into these: “Are mistruths ruining your business? ”.

Next week, I’ll dive deeper into how to start developing your sales strategy to give you better control of revenue growth.?

In the meantime, if you have any specific questions about strategy or business challenges, leave a comment below or send me a message, and I’ll be sure to address them next week.

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The above article is part of the B2B growth strategy newsletter.

Gavin is the Founder of Sales Market Fit and helps B2B SaaS companies be better at selling by rethinking their positioning/sales strategy to create a competitive advantage and close more sales.

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