en
Skip to main content
The most basic definition of success is simply achieving your goals. But it’s an interesting paradox. If you focus only on the end point, you might actually be hindering your ability to achieve those desired results—especially when it comes to your sales model. Experienced sales executives know that to transform an organization, a strategic sales review provides the foundation for success.
When it comes to your sales model, a strategic review can provide key information to guide your journey and ensure a successful outcome. This includes not just the goals, but all the objectives, work steps, processes, and support components you’ll need to maximize your ability to succeed.
This step-by-step guide contains everything you need to create your own roadmap.
“Taking a deep dive into how your organization functions will better position your sales team to service their clients effectively and maximize efficiency,” says Joseph DiMisa, Global Sales Strategy & Rewards Advisory Leader at Korn Ferry. He recommends a top-to-bottom review, encompassing everything from sales enablement to channel coverage strategies to performance management.
Be sure to include all key stakeholders in this exercise so you have a fully informed understanding of current sales processes, and your plan fully considers needs throughout the organization.
Ideally, a thorough review of your sales model should include the following:
You can’t build a map to get where you want to go if you don’t know where you are to begin with. And when it comes to developing a roadmap for your sales model, it’s crucial to understand how your current strategies are delivering.
Are you currently meeting sales targets? How healthy is your pipeline? Do segmentation models align with your product roadmap and corporate strategies? You must be able to answer these questions to identify opportunities for growth and improvement.
Undertaking a thorough assessment of your current operations confirms your organization’s readiness and capabilities for meeting go-to-market goals. Taking a closer look at end-to-end sales operations is important for identifying gaps in process, jobs, organizational structures, and overall account effectiveness.
But from market segmentation to support needs, there are a lot of moving parts. A complete strategic sales review should seek to answer the question of how well current capabilities and sales goals and strategies are aligned.
This should include the following steps:
The goal of this discovery exercise is to pinpoint opportunities for improvement within your sales model. Based on your findings, you should be able to develop more informed processes and structures for the sales function and supporting roles.
Winning at sales takes a special mix of skills, competencies, and fit—and this doesn’t always translate across companies or products. The better you understand the factors that help salespeople thrive within your organization, the easier it will be to maintain a high-performing sales structure.
In this step, you’ll take a closer look at individual roles in your sales channel, with an eye to the key competencies, accountabilities, and skillsets it takes to be successful.
From here, you’ll be equipped to recognize exactly what “good looks like” in a sales rep. This, in turn, should inform everything from hiring to talent development strategies and plans.
Your talent review should include the following:
Breakthrough to immediate, predictable and sustainable sales effectiveness
Sales teams are among the most expensive corporate expenditures, but it’s an investment that tends to yield high returns. As a study in the journal Compensation & Benefits Review notes, compensation is a top motivator for successful salespeople.
But driving sales ROI requires alignment between compensation and rewards and sales performance. Mitigating risk and reducing sales costs isn’t about containing rewards—it’s about ensuring incentive plans reap the intended results.
In this step, you’ll review and reassess compensation and reward structures to ensure they optimally support a performance-minded culture within the sales team. This should include the following:
A plan won’t do much if it’s sitting in a document on the corporate network. To move the dial, you must integrate your new data-informed strategy into people’s routines.
Now that you’ve formalized your sales assessment and strategy, you’ll need get buy-in and implement it. Here are some key steps to communicating and rolling out your new and improved sales model.
When it comes to reaching sales goals, there’s no one-size-fits-all route that works for every organization. Sales transformation success requires a strategic examination of both the broader market and your internal operations.
Following these steps is an exercise that can pay off and ensure individuals and teams within your organization have everything they need to be successful.
Of course, it might take more than a change to your business model to build and embed sustainable change in a sales organization. Find out how transforming your sales culture can help teams respond effectively to internal and external disruption.
Stay on top of the latest leadership news with This Week in Leadership - delivered weekly to your inbox.
