DEATH to single digit GROWTH

Last Month I was invited by our Mexican resellers to continue coaching their C-level and their sales managers on the 1+1+1=4!? Process "the ART and Science of getting 100% of your reps at goal".

Considering the fact that most sales managers can survive in most companies having about 60% to 75% of their reps making quota - which usually helps them achieve a sufficient but minimal level of growth- hitting goal for 80%+ of their reps however means getting in DOUBLE DIGIT GROWTH TERRITORY and even sometimes reaching triple digit GALAXY, IF you have a lot of A Players (Lions) in your sales team and IF they are ALL hitting on ALL cylinders...

In times of CHANGE especially when a new offering comes to market - the impact of the Front Line Sales Manager - "the LION Tamer" - is critical to lead CHANGE for her/his team to embrace the desperately needed new selling habits and messaging and there is a process for doing this faster.

The good news is that this process can be taught, it can be measured and should be inspected weekly in order for sales people to adopt the "Selling Change" faster, or get out of the business of trying selling the "new business" faster...because they realize sooner that they can't do it.

Sales Managers are no magicians however and can not transform everyone into "Lions" : not everyone can start selling services if they've sold hardware most of their lives, nor everyone can start selling streaming services when they've sold DVDs most of their lives and not everyone can sell Software as a Service when they've sold desktop licenses for the last 25 years...

But if the Sales Manager does the right thing quickly when Change "hits the Fan" ..., then the sales people will do the thing right faster, including deciding to stick with the "old business model" which is OK too because it needs to stick around anyway : Markets embrace change at their own pace, customers hate unplanned disruptions and also need time to adjust to the new solution .

I started working with our local team in Mexico earlier this year as one of the early adopters (with Turkey and APSouth see previous post on the topic). Since everyone from our Area Sales Leader, our Partner Success Manager and our resellers themselves from the Top all the way down to the field got excited quickly about learning this new process for them, they progressed fast and were able to start running it themselves right after the summer and the results are beginning to show already in Q4 2023.

These will accelerate in 2024 as they start empowering their own sales teams and everyone in their companies (marketing, tech teams, customer service,...) with the right habits, the right data to measure change against and the right questioning from the CEO inspecting (and coaching) her/his VP Sales, all the way down to the reps asking now different questions in front of their customers to better position the new offer with the right sales enablement focus and preparation (see Mike Spens' Post on his Mexican visit perfectly timed after mine to double down our impact - even though this was Q4, every Mexican reseller was on board and freed their resources as they understand better than anyone the value to them and already see how their sales managers and their sales people are loving it which will materialize in the final numbers soon!

Now, Selling a new offering like 3DEXPERIENCE is not a "lone wolf selling job" any more for SOLIDWORKS Partners : We also needed to incorporate in that process the various internal team elements who all contribute to making the sales team adopt new messaging and new habits faster - Mexico is again in the driving seat of Change with another PSM of the Future Cecilia leveraging the power of ALL DASSAULT Systemes Resources in order to accelerate the success of all of her Mexican Resellers.

As we near the end of the year now and we have pretty good idea of which levers are connected to which results thanks to the sales virtual twin of each reseller (see previous post on the topic), we were able with all of our 3 Major resellers in Mexico to define new upgraded trajectories for their 2023 landing and ALL 3 VARs are already shooting for double digit growth and double digit overachievements as well this year already...

Now, single digit growth is a little sad but will soon grow up for ALL of our channel partners into a full grown selling machine led by TOP VAR Lion Tamers, TOP PSMs, and TOP TSMs having all 3+gears empowering each other to build the right momentum that drives results.