3 Strategies to Enable Sales and Accelerate Revenue Growth
A company might have sales reps who individually sell well. But without a sales enablement strategy, it won’t become a growth company.
Daniel Perry, Managing Director-Sales Excellence at The Riverside Company, has witnessed this firsthand. He has more than 30 years of experience in sales, sales leadership, and sales consulting—working for some of the biggest companies in the world. Currently, Perry leads the sales excellence team for Riverside’s Micro-Cap Fund.
I had an opportunity to talk with Perry for a recent episode of The Adapter’s Advantage podcast, during which he discusses how Riverside’s sales excellence team accelerates revenue growth for the companies in the Micro-Cap Fund. In a nutshell, he says: “The goal of our team is to diagnose, help transform and then execute that transformation inside of our portfolio companies.”
As part of that transformation, Perry and his team help companies develop and execute their sales strategy. And that involves enabling sales leaders and reps to increase productivity and accelerate revenue growth. During our conversation, Perry and I discuss three strategies sales teams should employ to accomplish those goals.
3 Strategies to Accelerate Revenue Growth
1. Use a CRM
That may sound basic, but often companies do not follow fundamental sales and marketing practices. And some company leaders may push back when told they need a customer relationship management (CRM) system, Perry says.
The fact of the matter is, though, a CRM helps sellers and marketers identify, qualify, and track leads. They should use it to record and manage data about and interactions with buyers and potential buyers. A central system allows multiple people to access and edit information about a buyer’s journey. When you have everything accessible in one system, you reduce clutter and paperwork, speed up communication, and improve buyer satisfaction.
And make sure you have a change management process to ensure everyone is on board with the new technology and will actually use it, Perry says. If they don’t use it, you’re just wasting money, he adds.
2. Identify Your Ideal Buyer
Don’t try to sell to everyone, Perry says. If you do, you expend a lot of effort on prospects who will never respond to your calls or emails. Instead identify potential customers who are more likely to buy from you. Then develop personas and buying process maps, he says. Determine their goals, fears, concerns, buying decision process, and what they need.
Apply the same logic to referral partners, Perry says. You want to make sure your partners refer buyers who match your ideal customer profile.
When you home in on your ideal buyer personas, you increase seller productivity, speed up the buying process, and accelerate revenue growth.
3. Build Your Sales and Marketing Around Your Ideal Buyer
Having ideal buyer personas enables you to align your sales and marketing teams around your buyers’ needs, your core value proposition, and messaging of your product or service, Perry says. Use that information to create sales content and collateral that sellers can share with potential buyers. Marketers can then also create and distribute buyer-centric content to generate leads.
When your marketers and sales reps know who they’re talking to and how to talk to them, you’ll soon have a well-oiled sales and marketing machine, he says.
Transforming Sales and Marketing
In 2016, Perry’s team applied these three revenue growth strategies to a newly acquired company, transforming its sales and marketing efforts.
“We documented all that and then built a sales and marketing organization with the proper value proposition, proper marketing website portals, expanded our product offering, and really set into motion a ‘sales and marketing engine’ that allowed for continuous lead flow and better conversion rates,” he says.
All that work paid off. In just four years, the company went from $1.6 million in revenue to $17.8 million.
“It’s a 10x increased amount of revenue growth annually. And we did that by applying sales and marketing fundamentals and these leading trends onto a company that has never had that before,” Perry says.
> Learn More: Listen to Perry’s interview on The Adapter’s Advantage podcast to get more details about the power of sales enablement and how to get started creating your own sales enablement program.
>> Subscribe to The Adapter’s Advantage Podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and TuneIn.
