Once upon a time (about a week ago), a CRO, a sales leader and a presales leader reached out to me. They said their sales and presales processes were “sometimes adequate”, but there were problems they wanted to address – they felt their teams could be much more productive.
I asked about their symptoms. In their sales processes, they said they were seeing:
- High No Decision rates
- Delayed sales process step conversions
- Far too many “overview” and “Harbor Tour” demos
- Many unsuccessful demos
- Many wasted demos
- “Challenging” POCs
- Many unsuccessful POCs
- “Unjustified” discounting
I asked, “What about your planning and tracking processes?” They reported they were experiencing:
- Small “Land” footprints
- Landing, but not expanding
- Inaccurate forecasts and pipelines – “We’re living in the Land of Hope”
- Salespeople with “happy ears”
- EOQ negative surprises
- Pursuing opportunities that had “poor product fit” to make quota
- Scrambling to try to close business each quarter
I asked, “What happens post-sale?” They reported:
- A high number of failed implementations
- Lots of Customer Success Manager “rescue missions”
- High levels of churn
- And an uncomfortably high number of negative references from customers
Finally, I asked about the team’s discovery skills. They said:
- The team is trained in XX sales methodology, but they don’t really follow it
- The team uncovers pain – but that’s about it
- No exploration of value
- No exploration of impact
- Many “discovery” calls are actually vendor and product presentations
- Some team members try to do “discovery on the fly”, but end up doing “Harbor Tour” demos
- They do qualify for budget and timing
- But they don’t distinguish between prospects who are in an active buying process versus “just browsing”
What’s your diagnosis?
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