Key Insights from SPENCON 2025: Sales & Marketing Strategies for Growth

During SPENCON 2025, several industry leaders discussed strategies to help businesses build high-performing sales and marketing teams, optimize revenue streams, and drive growth.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Building a Winning Sales Team Strategy

Edward Ndegwa (Mwalimu wa Sales) outlined a strategic approach to structuring sales and marketing teams; integrating inbound, outbound, and account management approach. His presentation stressed the importance of staying ahead of market trends, setting SMART goals, defining an ICP, forming a routine around your team, and leveraging digital marketing and CRM tools.?

2. How Research Can Deliver Revenue Growth

Maureen Macharia MD - ( Spindle Design ) highlighted the role of customer research in boosting revenue. She urged businesses to go beyond mere assumptions by clearly identifying their ICP and systematically gathering customer feedback. An ICP gives a business a clear focus from the noise in the market to ensure your activities yield maximum ROI.

3. Structuring Sales Commission For Growth

Zedekiah Otieno (Co-Founder - Alpha Systems Limited Ke ) emphasized the vital importance of well-designed Sales Incentive Plans (SIPs) in ensuring that salespeople’s earnings reflect their contributions while also keeping the business profitable. He pointed out typical pitfalls, such as commission caps and unnecessarily complicated formulas, and proposed a clear four-step framework to navigate these challenges.

1. Setting fair earning targets to attract and retain top talent.
2. Establishing company sales goals that align with revenue objectives.
3. Defining clear crediting rules to ensure transparency and fairness.
4. Executing granular commission payouts linked to contribution margins rather than just sales volume.

4. The Importance of Sales Planning

Michael Mbungu (Regional Sales Manager - Kenya Wine Agencies Limited - KWAL ) reinforced the necessity of sales planning for businesses, drawing comparison from Formula 1 where refining granular details results in remarkable output overtime. He outlined the key elements of a successful sales plan, including:

• Clearly defining target markets
• Setting measurable goals
• Implementing strategic sales tactics
• Allocating budgets effectively
• Tracking performance metrics

To Cap or not to Cap?

An interesting part of the event was a panel discussion on whether companies should cap or uncap the commissions for their sales team.??

Where do you stand on the same issue, what is your take?