In order to succeed in the 21st century, follow these seven strategies.

1. 721The Seven Strategies for B2B Sales Management Success in the 21st Century

2. 721
The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales Management
Success in the 21st Century
IntegrateSalesandMarketing.One
DefineYourProcess.Two
StaffwithSpecialists.Three
Onlythebestpeople.Four
Developeachperson’sstrengths.Five
Measuretherightthings.Six
Looknearandfartoimprove.Seven

3. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
Are you all too familiar with the Sales staff that blames Marketing for
weak leads? Or the Marketing team that gripes the salespeople can’t sell?
You’ll doom yourself to failure if your company continues to manage
Marketing and Sales as two different departments, as if they are two
independent or separable functions.
It’s a single process from thought leadership to lead generation to lead
nurturing and qualification, and then on to the client needs
analysis, solution development, implementation,
account management, and resell or renewal.
Perhaps there was once a time when the
tug-o-war worked. Today, you need a
single team under a single leader
with fluid communication and
coordinated goals. This will
produce not just peace, but
profits.
One.IntegrateSalesandMarketing.

4. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
Study your industry’s best practices. Analyze the commonalities between
how your company’s most successful producers operate. Call in an outside
strategy firm.
Whichever method(s) you choose, settle on the sequence of steps that
produce the best outcomes—the most clients of the right type, paying
the strongest prices, generating the most profit, getting the highest
satisfaction, sticking around for the longest time. For example, you might
establish this five-step process:
Two.DefineYourProcess.
Formalize the process. Determine the best methods for accomplishing
each step as well as the information and resources needed. Set quality
standards for each step that indicate when that step is completed and the
account should be moved to the next step. Program the sequence and the
standards into your CRM, ERP, or pipeline management software.
A B C ED► ► ► ►

5. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
The days when the lone-wolf sales model made sense are long gone.
When selling was simple, one-to-one, and face-to-face, the lone-wolf
model had some traction. Today, selling is complex, team-oriented,
and rarely in-person—and the old model just gets in the way.
Look back at the steps you determined in Principle Two. Can
you imagine one person having the talents, the skills, and the
temperament to be outstanding in all those functions?
Neither can we. Today, you want to staff with specialists for each step
in the sequence. Let each person handle the aspect they’re best at.
Do you think this reduces accountability? The opposite is true. Keep
reading and learn how this division-of-labor approach makes it easier
to know where your sales problems are and what to do about them.
Three.StaffwithSpecialists.
A B C ED► ► ► ►

6. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
These days most people know and can recite from memory that famous
sentence from Good to Great author Jim Collins, “Get the right people
on the bus, the wrong people off, and the right people in the right seats.”
But do they grasp its transcendent significance? With the right talent in
the right seats, you can do almost anything; without, you can do almost
nothing. And do they practice it? Do they have the systems, standards,
practices, and total commitment to select and retain the best?
And do they practice its corollary—to release those whose performance
hasn’t measured up?
Finding a lone-wolf
salesperson who has all
the talents required is
a tall order. But when
each step is staffed with
a specialist, you’ll be
surprised how easy it is.
Four.Onlythebestpeople.

7. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
We humans are more complex than any machine ever devised. We
succeed wholly because of our strengths. How far we go, how high we
soar, depends only on how well we develop our talents and how much
opportunity we have to use those strengths.
How each of us behaves from moment to moment is the result of a
fascinating combination of our major and lesser
strengths, interacting with our various non-
strengths. A good coach, mentor, or manager,
equipped with a strong talent assessment, has
the information to cast each person into a
role where their strengths align as perfectly
as possible with job requirements.
The manager or mentor then optimizes the
person’s performance by helping them build
their strengths and work around (not fix!)
their non-strengths.
Five.Developeachperson’sstrengths.

8. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
Instinct is a wonderful thing, but managing a sales organization by gut feel
is so 20th
century. The world is awash in data, and savvy sales organizations
are highly data-driven.
The challenge today is to choose the right data for your dashboard, to limit
your inputs to those metrics that you know matter. Globally, you might
decide to measure, for example, lead flow, lead conversion, new business,
and repeat business.
But you can also measure each step in your sequential process. Because
you created quality standards to
determine when each step is
complete and a handoff is in
order, you can now track each
person’s performance—and
have a very granular view of
where your sales problems
(and solutions!) lie.
Six.Measuretherightthings.

9. 721The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales
Management Success
in the 21st Century
At the same time,
keep a highly
granular close-up
view of your own
operation. Develop
feedback systems
that are specific and timely.
• Track how your solutions are
performing for clients, and see
the opportunities to increase
client satisfaction.
• Track how your process and
your people are performing,
and see how to pinpoint—and
rectify— problems before they
become destructive.
Stay focused on
the horizon—and
beyond. Get a wide-
angle image so you
can take it all in.
Develop intelligence
Seven.Looknearandfartoimprove.
systems and sources. Subscribe
and read. Study trend data.
Talk to clients, prospects, and
competitors about how the
world is changing. Prioritize
your links to emerging
technology. Look for trends in
your own internal data. Hold
strategy sessions in which you
attack yourself.

10. 721
The Seven Strategies
for B2B Sales Management
Success in the 21st Century
IntegrateSalesandMarketing.One
DefineYourProcess.Two
StaffwithSpecialists.Three
Onlythebestpeople.Four
Developeachperson’sstrengths.Five
Measuretherightthings.Six
Looknearandfartoimprove.Seven

11. Learn more
about
finding only
the best people.
Learn more
about
how to measure
the right things.
Learn more
about
The Center for
Sales Strategy.
© www.TheCenterforSalesStrategy.com. 7-21 The Seven Strategies for Sales Management Success in the 21st Century-B2B