The document outlines 12 essential tips for achieving consistent sales growth, emphasizing the importance of a documented sales process, targeted growth strategies, and effective customer engagements. It highlights the need for rigorous forecasting, sales management practices, and ongoing training of the sales force to enhance performance and account penetration. The author, Simon Warman-Freed, shares insights based on his extensive experience in business growth and strategy, encouraging businesses to prioritize customer focus and proactive talent management.

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12 Tips
for driving
consistent
sales growth
Written by:
Simon Warman-Freed
CEO Intelligent Business Growth

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Simon has over 25 years’ proven international management, sales, business development and strategy experience with particular emphasis on new business start up, growth and acquisition:
He has built a number of highly successful £ ƒƒ multi million start up IT and services companies. Simon also spent time as a Sales and marketing director with “Big 4” professional services firm with a focus on helping entrepreneurial and mid-market companies optimise their strategy to deliver significant growth.
Simon founded Intelligent Business ƒƒ Growth which has successfully worked with many companies to build and implement sales and marketing strategies and deliver significant business wins.
He has a deep expertise in understanding the ƒƒ issues and pressures facing business owners and people within businesses at all levels, and a track record of delivering strong results.
S
imon Warman-Freed
CEO
Intelligent Business Growth

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copyright Simon Warman-Freed 2013
1Sales Process
Develop a documented sales process. It is the foundation for continuous improvement, measurement and focus. It is the roadmap and framework for coaching and for creating a common language with the sales force.
2Growth Strategies Portfolio
Define your top strategies for growth each year. Research suggests that Account Penetration, Retention and New Business Acquisition are the most important strategies. You must do these three and then execute them flawlessly. Pursuing too many strategies dilutes your focus and therefore impedes success.
3repositioning
Reposition yourself as a “problem solver” so you have something for your “solution or service” to fix. Broaden your perspective and therefore your impact. Focus your sales force on strategies that help improve your customer’s business results. Be aggressive in quantifying
the cost of the customer’s problems
therefore heightening the value of your
solution or service in solving these problems.
4Metrics
Create deliberate measures that reflect both historical and leading indicators of effectiveness. The number of measures you select will depend on your business and the level of rigour you need to apply for your sales force.
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op 12 tips for driving consistent sales growth

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5 Customer Business Reviews
Make quarterly or semi-annual Business Reviews a must for each salesperson’s top five customers. This customer satisfaction measure must include identifying any potential issues that they may have with your organisation. Enforcing Customer Business Reviews is a proven strategy to build account penetration and to establish customer loyalty. It is the single best strategy to change the customer’s perception of your sales force from “vendors”
to “advisors.”
6 Growth Planning
Establish accountability and discipline for achieving financial goals through Territory Growth Plans and Key Account Strategy practices. Organisations that are rigorous around territory execution win more often than those that don’t.
7 Forecasting
Establish a monthly forecasting system that looks at the pipeline formally, and is a key element of the formal coaching conversation. Ensure
your forecasting method communicates
clearly where each opportunity stands in the sales process. Pipeline management reminds the salesperson of the need to think like a business person and to make deliberate choices on where to invest time in order to move opportunities forward.
8 Sales Management Practices
Explicitly define the practices you expect of your sales managers. Define standards for their roles as leaders, recruiters, strategists and coaches rather than glorified salespeople. Choose sales managers not for their selling skills but for their desire to lead, teach and coach.

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9 Segmentation
Build intimacy and depth of experience through customer segmentation. Identify the critical segments for your business and consider organising your sales team by market segments. Then, create in-depth profiles of every segment and deliver aggressively to the requirements of each.
10 Skills Mastery
Be aggressive in developing and training your sales force. The quality of your frontline professionals drives your business. “Letting them work it out on their own” leaves too much to chance. The cost of turnover is prohibitive. Explicitly define the competencies required to win. Assess your team and all future hires against those competencies and invest seriously in sales force development.
11 Build a Bench
Actively recruit. Being reactive about finding talent hinders your growth. Seasoned executives affirm they are more constrained by the calibre and action orientation of their people than they are by capital. Reducing the effect of staff turnover is essential to sustain double-digit growth.
12 Customer Focus
Finally, ensure that the voice of the customer permeates everything you do. Conduct Customer Value Analysis quarterly or semi-annually to determine what customers most value about you. Identify and ward off
early-stage issues, essentially nipping
them in the bud, therefore eliminating
the risk of losing your customers. Not every customer tells you that there is a problem unless you specifically ask. Make listening to the customer, and then acting on and communicating back to them a core practice.

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ARE
YOU EXPERIENCING ANY OF THESE CHALLENGES OR IS SOMETHING ELSE ON YOUR MIND?
If so, IBG have helped over 300 Business Owners overcome many of the challenges that have been identified in this book and many other challenges too. But it’s not what we say that is important. It is what our clients think about us that counts! So please feel free to look at http://www.ibg-world. com for a video testimonial and http://ibg-world. com/testimonials-2/ for written testimonials.
If you are experiencing any challenges within your business and would like to get in touch please feel free to call me directly on 020 368 6606 or alternatively email me at simon.warman-freed@ibg-world.com.
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ou can also find me on
ituf

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