Auditing sales performance: beyond the numbers.

Sales performance is the heartbeat of B2B organizations. Yet, amidst the clamor of sales scientists’ irrefutable industry KPIs and growth hackers proven recipes that worked elsewhere, lies a critical oversight : to boost sales performance, you should focus on sales numbers only. Preliminary audit consists in entering basic numbers into a well-oiled framework. This is no wonder therefore that recommendations boil down to Chat GPT like free advice. Unsurprisingly, this type of audit is offered free of charge.

In reality, to truly unlock the potential of a sales organization and drive sustainable growth, auditing must transcend mere numbers, delving into the intricate realms of strategy, culture, talent, and processes. Ignoring this holistic approach is not only shortsighted but potentially catastrophic for businesses aiming either to fix a bigger issue and trying to build long term success.

Auditing Sales and marketing is a serious job. This is the cornerstone of our services. Here’s how we do it.

Stepping back :

We leverage Mats Urde’s Corporate reputation and identity matrix to review the fundamentals of your business from vision and mission to revenue streams and market positioning We tweak it to provide a structured and comprehensible overview of the key elements of your sales and marketing strategy, generate informed discussions about key linkages and alignment and help identify issues and areas of improvement that will support your sales efforts.

We leverage various tools and methods like 4Cs and SCAMMPERR for creative thinking, client portfolio management or strategy canvas to think rigorously and creatively about what can be done to address your challenges.

Drilling down :

We leverage the Bold & Sharp Sales & Marketing Index, the Bold & Sharp Organizational Health Index, and the Bold & Sharp Sales Operations Index to review and spot all the possible sources that may hinder your sales performance. We focus on sales for sure and pay specific attention to performance distribution and execution standards. However, selling is a process which involves supporting functions that ALL contribute to deliver customer value. In particular, we examine the following components:

• Marketing differentiation, alignment with sales, personalization by industry and personas.
• Pre-sales: responsiveness, customer experience, contribution and creativity.
• Implementation On-time, on-budget, total customer experience.
• Customer success success definition, value measurement and comfort with access to power.
• Operations impact, prioritization and creativity.

Talents first:

We review your sales talents skills, behaviors and attitude through ad ’hoc interviews and real-life customer meetings.

Our assessment includes what should be kept, removed or prioritized to bridge performance gaps against your Ideal Sales Profile, not a generic and elusive definition of sales eagles: a tailored made profile listing the success factors required according to what you sell and to whom you sell.

We may also complete a culture test to measure whether your culture is real, supports or hinders your sales performance. We may leverage Pentland ‘s test and Lencioni ‘s framework to identify team dysfunctions and provide simple solutions to overcome them. We may have to assess your capacity to change by focusing on purpose creation, direction and connection.

Fixing things:

Processes and systems are the arteries of business performance. The Bold & Sharp Sales & Marketing Index is the perfect place to start and examine every aspect of the sales experience.

We start with your sales process. We namely look at: how your sales process is implemented and to what extent it reflects the way your customers buy; how many sales processes exist to fit various business opportunity types; how strong are the sales stages transitions and verifiable outcomes; what job aids are available to support reps; how consistent is the management system.

Our goal is however to streamline processes, leverage technology, and embrace automation to unleash the full potential of your sales organization, drive efficiency and effectiveness. Among others, our recommendations encompass CRM optimization, marketing automation and account-based marketing implementation.

Some may argue that such a comprehensive audit would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Well, it is not for free, but the investment is marginal compared to the cost of neglecting these critical dimensions. By embracing a holistic approach that encompasses strategy, culture, talent, and processes, we unlock the full potential of your sales organization.

Want to find out more? Contact us on Bold and Sharp to receive a version of our audit framework.

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Think. Good selling.