Sales Success: What to Do First?

The chicken or the egg is one of the oldest questions to face our species, and in sales development it is no different. Everyday at Set 2 Close we are asked who to hire first, the manager/director or the sales staff and the answer is always the same, it depends.

Please note this is from an SMB angle and not that of a mature sales organization.

We evaluate the following key items to determine what to do first and why:

• Do you have a strong closer inhouse already?? - Let’s face it, business is all about bringing new cash into the business and any sales project will suffer without this function. Without cashflow any sales project build can become a money pit so make sure a founder, VP or sales person has this aspect on lock before anything else.
• Do you have a good system for tracking, follow-ups, sequences and workflows to help automate the sales function to a large degree. This should be set-up before bringing in a sales director and is normally done by a VP level person or an outside consultant like Set2Close.?
• Do you have steady sales channels producing leads via email, ads, social media, texting, referral partners and others? Most SMBs think cold calling and connecting on LinkedIn is enough to win at sales but in the modern marketplace it just isn’t, especially without extreme burnout. Now each organization is different but from our experience the ones with the best sustained results, cultures and longevity are those that seek to feed their sales people great leads and opportunities. After this point you are ready for an SDR to push meetings to that amazing closer.?

Please note generalities don’t fit all businesses as each team is unique (resources, skill sets, culture and flow). Typically the right fit solution is complex and by asking the right questions can? become evident.

As a common rule we look for value proposition strength, closing ability, system capabilities, ability to scale leads via sales channels and then we look at adding people to the mix for pure economic efficiency. This will be approached differently with strong funding as we would bring in more people during the buildout processes to reduce lead time of the project, and look more at long-term opportunity cost realizations.?

This is based upon the Company’s tolerance to risk, budget and need for speed!

The greatest asset in all of this is a clear direction via great strategic planning, clear vision and organizational empowerment to follow one course until successful (F.O.C.U.S).?

We will leave you with a quote from the wonderful Jim Rohn, “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.”

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