What are the factors that separate many of today’s top-performing B2B sales organizations from the rest? Of course, having incredible products and services, as well as a defined target audience, is great, but what really sets you apart from the rest is your sales strategy and sales initiatives.
Sales initiatives are the few significant objectives that lead to your desired revenue results and drive your critical sales activities. “Getting to the numbers any way possible” is not the best or preferred method. Often sales initiatives include 2-3 key areas of growth, a defined plan, and measurable outcomes.
Sales initiatives provide critical direction for how you will win.
Setting sales initiatives helps you get laser-focused on how you will:
Your growth depends on the strategies you create and the execution plan you implement to make it happen. A growth strategy depends on your business’s goals and objectives.
Different Markets: To maintain steady growth, you can go after new markets with your same products and services.
New Product: Coming out with a new product is a good idea if you have a well-established market and credibility.
New Products and New Market: You can take a brand-new product and move to an entirely new market.
A growth strategy is crucial because it keeps your company working toward goals beyond what is happening in your market today. It keeps leaders and sales teams focused and aligned via sales initiatives and provides a new opportunity to bring in more revenue.
Once you identify where your growth will come from, you’ll want to start defining your sales initiatives. To begin breaking down the goal, start asking these questions.
Once you have clarity about what areas you want to focus on, the next thing you’ll want to know is if you are making progress. For example, if you said you want to hire new salespeople, is that happening? If so, is your investment working out?
Some sample measurements include:
The metrics you’ll be looking at will be specific to your sales initiatives. If you don’t measure your sales initiatives, they tend to end up as the thing you and your sales team talk about but don’t follow up with.
When you write your sales initiatives, you want to get specific – down to the quarter, if possible. You’ll want to include the overall goal, the initiatives, the activities, and the plan for how to measure results.
Examples could look like the following:
Initiative 1: Increase our sales capacity by 20% (from 10 – 12 people), and create an additional $500,000 in 2022 revenue from the new hires.
By the end of the year, you could absolutely say what percentage you accomplished this by. You could further break it down by specifying when you’d have the first salesperson hired. For instance, you would need the first two people hired by the end of the year to reach that $500,000 goal.
Initiative 2: Gain 27 new accounts with average revenue of $50,000 in Q1.
By the end of Q1, you’d be able to tell if this sales initiative is working or not. You’ll be able to see how the quarter and the rest of your year would be influenced by hitting this initiative.
The key to accelerating your company’s growth is specific sales initiatives and understanding the metrics that lead to success. Tracking your progress to the defined timeline and measurables, in order to see when and what adjustments you need to make for the next quarter, will help you achieve your annual goals.
Reach out to us at info@pivotaladvisors.com if you need more help determining your sales initiatives.
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