COMPREHENSIVE SALES MODEL PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENTS YIELD BIG REWARDS

Sales Model Analysis Can Jack Up Your Revenues

At the most fundamental level, your sales model might be described as how your revenues are made. Many variables contribute to the quality of your model though most companies don't put a great deal of strategic thought into how those pieces work together. Because they are so busy with the now, many companies can't even give much strategic consideration to optimizing the individual parts. This very common practice can cost your company on both ends: inefficient waste AND capped upside potential.

Often a sales model is established informally back when the business realized its very first sales. It is rare that the subsequent evolution perfectly meshes with the business as it grew. More often than not there are many less-than-optimal entrenched parts supported by "we've always done it that way" traditions. Sales inefficiencies abound- some not always readily obvious to company insiders- while others are painfully tolerated by a sales staff reluctant- even afraid- to bring attention to them. End result: your costs are higher than they need to be while your revenues are lower than they can be. An unoptimized model impacts both your bottom and top lines.

In a business that has grown in ways that somewhat-to-significantly differ from where it started, the sales model is almost always ripe for optimization. When sales are lower than expected or when sales that seem like they should be easily won are overly difficult to actually get closed, a thorough review of the sales model can yield meaningful improvements in revenue growth. There are many benefits to this. For example, if you happen to be driving your own company toward a cash out target (a business sale) getting your model optimized now is a great way to enhance the perceived value your prospective buyers will see in your business.

What's Involved in Optimizing a Sales Model for Growth & Margin Expansion?

One of our more novel benefits is our core team experience- and focus- in all of the growth-side aspects of business. We are narrowly focused only on the business variables that fuel revenue & profits: marketing, sales, development (product, website, business) and strategic planning & execution. As such, we are especially talented at being able to examine the growth side of YOUR business end-to-end, identifying the specific areas that could enhance your revenues.

As outside consultants, we do this without the biases, politics, psychology, etc, always prevalent with company insiders (which partially contributes to why your sales model is probably not already optimized). This allows us to see your company with objective clarity free of the influence of internal spin... perhaps the biggest key to successfully optimizing a sales model.

This end-to-end analysis means we examine ALL of the variables that influence your sales results, exploring topics like:

• Are you targeting the right market(s)?
• Are you ignoring or not noticing a new, accessible market(s)?
• Are you making the most of current opportunity?
• What is the quality of your value proposition?
• What is your competitors doing better than your company?
• How does your company self-image contrast with how your customers see you?
• What is the quality of your lead sources?
• How can your lead stream be qualified more effectively?
• What are the strategic trends impacting your business now and likely to impact it in the near future?
• What do your salespeople need to sell more?
• What new technologies could facilitate greater revenues?
• What are the obstacles to selling? How can they best be overcome?
• What actionable changes can yield more selling time for salespeople?
• How connected or disconnected are company decision-makers and customers?
• Would buying the right company(s) be helpful to enhancing your sales model?
• Could entering the hot mobile app marketing space help the company amp up revenues?
• Are you genuinely innovating and then fluidly executing on needed changes, or is there too much focus on maintaining the status quo or only modest, incremental changes?
• When you think about your company vs. your competitors are you out ahead of the pack, blended into the pack or trailing most of the pack? If we asked your customers this question, would they agree with your answer?
• Etc. (there are many more)

Can you develop answers to these kinds of questions internally? Sure you can, but that's where bias & politics can skew results. For example, many companies focus on the positives so hard that they actually come to believe some of their internal spin. We've worked with many companies that steadfastly believe that their products were superior in every way to their competitors products... that their marketing approaches were the ONLY way to market, etc. However, if all that was true why do they even have competitors? Why don't they own ALL of the market share for their industry?

Sales Model Consultant Objectivity Means We Can See Key Things You May Miss

Outside consultants like BI haven't been brainwashed with the corporate spin nor are we facilitators of the collective ego. Very simply, if your house is on fire, you don't really want to hear how nice your yard looks. If your sales model is not optimized, corporate ego, bias, politics, etc, will almost certainly skew the view... and miss many of the meaningful opportunities to grow your revenues & profits.

To do the job well, we interact with your people in the various growth departments. There are particular benefits in working with front-line employees closest to customers as they often have some of the most actionable insights about how to grease the wheels of your sales engine. It is also helpful to objectively develop an outside-looking-in view of your business from customer & competitor standpoints. It is consistently beneficial to go right to the source of revenues for insights on this topic and there is always much to be learned- and potentially absorbed- from competitor brilliance (because your competitors are working just as hard to take market share from your company). Our collective brilliance model is an excellent way to achieve this.

By strategically identifying all of the growth-impact variables we can help you recognize many opportunities for improving your sales model. The actionable recommendations we provide can then be screened, prioritized and implemented by you and your team (or we can implement them for you). Most recommendations can be tested on a small scale then rolled out mainstream as they demonstrate enhanced impact.

Big Innovations can be your unbiased, external resource for helping your company optimize your sales model toward maximum productivity. Even a little success within an unoptimized model can yield enormous returns in the short and long-term. Those returns are usually measured in cash revenue growth and cost savings: the fundamental recipe for profit margin expansion. Contact us for a free consultation. We would love to help you grow your revenues to record levels!