Sales Should Not Be Like a Box Of Chocolates

Why Sales Should Not Be Unpredictable

As Michael Scott once said in a terrible Forrest Gump impression. “Sales is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get”, but as anyone who has ever watched The Office tv show can tell you, Michael Scott is very often wrong.

Why Most Companies Struggle to Create Predictable Sales

Here’s the deal folks, contrary to popular belief, sales should not be like a box of chocolates. It should be and is meant to be quite predictable and if it is not, you are doing it wrong. And if you are in that boat where sales is an unpredictable swirling vortex of chaos and revenue and guessing and wondering and, worst of all, hoping, you are not alone. Most companies know they want more sales, most companies need more sales, but very few know how to precisely get there and how to maintain it. This is what most companies get wrong about sales predictability, they rely on hope, not systems.

The Real Reason Sales Teams Stay Stuck

So why do so many find themselves treading the water just to stay afloat and hit their numbers? Put quite simply, it's a problem with systems. Most companies think they have an idea of what works and so they just roll with it but when it doesn’t work out or they want to scale it, they are left guessing. Guessing about how to replicate what their top performers did to be so successful. Guessing how they can make that person’s life as easy as possible. Guessing about how much revenue they will be making next quarter or next year. Guessing and hoping is not a strategy people!

So what should you be doing instead to create a predictable revenue system, in other words, how to build a repeatable sales system? The steps involved vary and we will have to cover each one in a separate post, but for now here’s some things you should be thinking about:

Start with the Foundation and Clear Goals

Start with the foundation and clear goals. None of this is going to work without a proper CRM (one that scales, integrates and is very customizable to fit your needs. Did we mention, we’re a HubSpot elite partner *wink*). None of this is going to work without a sales manager or RevOps specialist who is going to build and run the process. And none of this is going to work if you don’t give your sales team clear goals and incentives! Sales is fun. It should be a team sport with real stakes.

Report, Report, Report

Once you have the foundations in place and have built a proper sales process we need to be setting up reports and dashboards. We need to at the very least, be able to see activity numbers and leading indicators that show when a lead becomes a deal and when a deal is likely to close. This is another reason why it’s so important to have a good CRM in place with data that you can trust.

Iterate and Automate

Most people are only using about 10% of the full power of their CRM. If all you do is set up a process, report on the results and yell at your sales team, you’re still treading water. What needs to happen next is to analyze the data and iterate. Go back to step 1, you should see that there are some clear opportunities for automation between each stage of your process. These are not complicated but will provide your sales team with reasons to continue using the CRM and ensure that adoption is certain. Interview them and find out what is working for them and what is causing them stress in the system. If you need some help with this step, feel free to give us a call. CRM Adoption is our specialty.

Double Down on What Works

Once you have a system that you know works, it's time to double down. If your SDR is having great conversations that are leading to 5 appointments a week with 100 calls a day, its time to get them to do 500 calls a day and book 25 appointments a week. There are dialing systems that can easily get you more calls.

What does your data look like? Is your team doing a lot of manual research to find cell phone numbers, emails etc. We live in the golden age of data. Yes you have to pay for it, but you’ve got a process that works. Pay for it. Stop wasting your team's time on non revenue generating activities.

What’s your customer acquisition system look like? What channels are you using? Studies show that omni channel prospecting (hitting up prospects on multiple channels (email, LinkedIn, phone calls, etc.)  is the most reliable way and a lot of it can be automated and highly targeted.

Optimize optimize optimize

Once you have the tools in place, the team is adopting the system and things are humming, its time to build upon it even more. If the CPL right now is $1000, how do we get it to $800? Why did we lose deals last year; what does that tell us about where we should be spending our time? These are questions we should constantly be asking and iterating upon. If you got time to lean, you’ve got time to make your processes more lean. Softwares are always changing and getting better and a tool that you’ve been using for the last 2 years might not be the best to use going forward. 

Don’t get distracted by shiny objects. You have a process now and remember any new tool that you are adding, needs to go through these same steps to be successful.

Final Thoughts: Building a Predictable Sales Engine

This is just a brief overview of our advice for creating a predictable sales system. If you would like us to take a look at your system and assess your readiness for something like this, feel free to set up a meeting with one of our revenue consultants. We’d be happy to do a complimentary cursory audit. Don’t end up like Michael Scott, he had no direction and drove himself into a lake. But more on that later.

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