Pressure is Privilege - Part One

"Pressure is a privilege" - Billie Jean King. "Pressure" refers to the weight of expectations, the need to perform under difficult circumstances, or the challenges that come with pursuing ambitious goals. Instead of viewing pressure negatively, as something to be avoided or feared, it suggests that we should recognize it as an opportunity.

Pressure from the outside world is reflected in targets, performance evaluations, criticism sometimes or opinions shared about what you did, are doing or plan to do.

On top, most of us (all of us?) have an inner judge, pilot, or voice(s),... that tries to steer you in the direction you want to head to, to succeed, gain recognition, to achieve your personal goal. For many, this internal voice is louder than the external drivers.

In this two-part article, I want to share my insights as a B2B Revenue leader on how you can drive performance by being better at strategy & execution, adopting the right sales enablement, and most importantly - how coaching and mentoring teams will impact high-performance situations. As I operate in tech (software), this is where I will focus on.

In this first part, I focus on Strategy & Execution, and choice of sales enablement as first elements of driving sales performance        

Performance in sales

Sales excellence and sales enablement have become 'professions within a profession'. Driving teams to achieve excellence in challenging situations, using all elements at hand - technology, expertise, services, or creating the environment in which sales teams can thrive or achieve above-par performance.

The Profession, The Industry & The Professional

Sales growth is determined by how the sales performance management system can operate on every level down to the sales representatives. In my opinion, there a three dimensions that drive sales performance:

1. "The Profession": Strategy & Execution
2. "The Industry of Sales": Enablement (Technology based upon data and services)
3. "The Professional": You as a sales professional (and manager), personal (Attitude, skills,...)

Strategy & Execution

Succes in cascading from stratey to planning and execution lies in the importance of your commercial-excellent approach in Strategy & Execution. How can you reach your revenue targets most efficiently? The effort doesn't end with a business or target plan at the beginning of the year (or the year-end before), no matter how well executed and detailed in Excel that plan might be.

It is a continuous effort of zooming in on different levels (capabilities, skills, mindset across buyer journeys), translating the correct strategic assumptions into your levels, and plotting the right path forward in a dynamic scenario, an offense-defense playbook. "What if this, what if that…?"

Find more inspiration in my article: "The importance of commercial excellence for your organization" or get inspiration when facing transformational challenges in "How to get through this crisis period as a Sales Professional." and "The Genius of Flexible B2B Sales Teams to answer to radical change" .

Enablement: Data-driven outperformance

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure”

According to HubSpot , "Today’s average closing rate across all industries is 20%. And while that sounds low, data shows that high-performing organizations close 30% of deals."

There are two dimensions to this sentence: "data" and "outperformance". We have become a data-driven profession (at least the best-in-class companies are data-driven), and second, gaining a couple of percentages over your peers sets you apart very, very fast. Improving closing rates is the outcome of many steps that lead to that ultimate goal, but consists of better GTM, strategy & planning, execution, buyer enablement, and understanding your ICP. And - on top of having a "limbic system" in place which self-corrects.

Goldilocks: Data & Metrics

High-performing sales teams use data intensely as the foundation for their success. The key is to identify the most impactful data points and key performance indicators (KPIs), interpret the findings, and take action to reach or exceed sales goals.

Two lenses for the same data

While sales managers use high-level, holistic sales KPIs that provide visibility across the entire sales team’s performance, sales reps typically focus on more tactical KPIs. Regardless of position, a team’s ability to turn sales KPIs into an actionable plan can positively impact the bottom line.

Choose your metrics wisely

In essence, with your metrics, you want to steer on three main axes of sales performance:

1. Quality
2. Growth
3. Efficiency

This poses a problem, as "efficiency" might limit "growth", or "growth" can impact "quality". This is what is called the "Goldilocks Triangle".

The “Goldilocks Triangle” represents the everpresent tradeoffs between Quality, Growth, and Efficiency that constrain every business.

If you push too hard in the direction of one or two of these outcomes, at least one or two of the others will inevitably suffer. You cannot have a consistently growing, consistently profitable business without balancing and periodically rebalancing your focus on Quality, Growth, and Efficiency. There’s a big difference between “We can measure this,” and “We should measure this,”.

How to solve the Goldilocks Triangle and advance on what data and metrics ytou should focus on?

Use the below framework to help you construct your data framework.

Use what you can control to get to outputs that give a fast response to Northstar objectives which are tightly locked to financial objectives.

Some inspiration on Sales KPIs can be found below (source: Netsuite ) As stated in the article: "Sales teams are the driving force behind sales and profit, and the pressure to perform is high. Successful sales teams use carefully selected KPIs to track and measure the performance of the entire sales organization to gain insight on how they are progressing toward their goals. Armed with key performance indicators, teams are well poised to do what they do best: sell."

The Industry of Sales: Sales Enablement industry grows at a 20% to 25% CAGR

Who else to listen to than our Belgian pride Showpad on sales enablement? Showpad explains sales enablement as follows: "Forrester defines sales enablement as “a strategic, ongoing process that equips client-facing employees to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle.”

Sales Enablement goes deeper. It’s the strategic process to prepare sales organizations with the right tools, content, and information to sell successfully. It empowers reps to deliver an engaging experience for modern buyers who expect personalization, automation, and overall innovation."

The global Sales Enablement Platform & Services market size is expected to expand at a CAGR of about 20% to 25.52% during the forecast period, reaching USD 5401.65 million by 2027. Research article - KBV research

The COVID pandemic certainly boosted the sales enablement industry, when B2B tech companies were switching rapidly to remote sales and accelerated already existing initiatives around remote selling, social selling, and other requirements fueld by changing buyer behavior.

How to bring sales enablement to drive your sales performance?

Very broadly spoken, sales enablement streamlines processes, reduces manual tasks, and boost productivity. As a secondary oucome, it shortens sales cycles, closes deals faster, and drives revenue growth.

Lessons our of orgnizations using sales enablement

While 42.0% of organizations revealed that they had effectively aligned their enablement services with the buyer’s journey, only 25% of them were applying the necessary steps to reach buyer enablement. (source: Forrester)

To have a better success rate in your B2B sales process, you need buyer enablement. For that you need to have all the basics in the right place.

A key component of a comprehensive sales enablement plan is a fully mapped-out customer path.

Without customer-centricity, any sales enablement is useless. That introduces the first issue: before introducing sales enablement, you really need to do all the ground work.

Now it's time to put the turbo on your sales team!

Where to start?

1. Establish clear structure: Establish a formalized structure of your sales enablement strategyA formalized sales enablement charter is more likely to gain executive support and engage cross-functional collaborators in these efforts. Aligning with your exec team throughout the process is key. The author of? the charter should first sit down with executives to define what they’re looking for in this sales enablement strategy. Don’t be intimidated by creating a charter. It doesn’t need to be a step-by-step guide of your enablement processes; after all, things will change along the way.
2. Define sales enablement for all roles: Transparently outline the sales enablement charter of your organization early and often.The obvious function of enablement in this regard is to streamline the process that moves marketing’s valuable content and collateral over to sales to utilize those assets and close more deals. These two teams are essential and should be the primary touchpoint of your initial enablement design plan. Of course, enablement should foster stronger communication between these two teams, while simultaneously looking beyond the imagined restrictions of enabling these two teams alone.?
3. Empower valuable conversations: the Customer Journey should be at the center of both your sales enablement strategy and your formalized sales process.Customers expect personalized conversations now more than ever. They’re looking for consistency across sales and support teams. And even though the bulk of selling happens over the phone, 85% of prospects and customers still report being dissatisfied with their on-the-phone experience. The technology is bountiful, but it means nothing without utilizing its potential. For the last few years, the industry has focused on automation technologies; now is the time to leverage the analytics that those technologies have provided us with to tailor and personalize messaging.?
4. Build out an intentional tech stack: It’s now assumed that enablement strategies are rooted in technologies, but in reality, they’re only a single piece of the pie, and it’s easy to assume they’ll solve all your enablement problems. Bear in mind that, “For any technology implementation to work, the first step must be behavioral. Only then can tools to enhance efficiency be considered.” (Mark Savinson, Forbes )?Programs are plentiful, but there’s no magic catch-all software solution out there. It’s important to implement an intentional tech stack that empowers your teams. These tools should keep your teams within their workflows. Use tech that can produce insights native to your workflow.?
5. Measure outputsMonitor adoption: Utilize a simple survey application to gain perspective on this as early as possible.?Identify sales enablement metrics and KPIs to continuously analyze what knowledge-empowered reps to close deals.?If you can identify and create data around this, you’ll be positioned to optimize your knowledge-creation efforts.??Evaluate impact on revenue goals as sales enablement in the end is a revenue-driver. Track how your strategy impacts your company’s revenue goals at large.?Analyze sales cycles by integrating your enablement solution into workflows.

In Part Two, I will focus on what I feel most important: The Professional. Both you as a sales leader, and your teams. How the human aspect is both the most delicate and the most interesting.