More Sales —Strategic Level (Sales Funnel 101)
This is part of an introductory series written for first-time sales managers and also for executives, founders, and owners whose day-to-day is not sales. Links to the rest of the series are at the bottom of this post.
Limitations / disclaimer / word of caution
The focus of this series of posts is the sales funnel and particularly the part of the funnel that sales is involved directly with (leads → opps → deals).
That is admittedly a limited scope of view. There’s a lot regarding demand that happens before a lead hits sales’ desk.
In a potentially oversimplified drawing of lines, the focus of this series leans heavily toward what happens with captured demand rather than focusing on how to generate demand. The content of this series of posts is generally about doing more with what you have right now (the leads and opps in front of you) rather than the generation of demand at its root.
There are limitations to what you can do with the funnel in front of you. There are basically three “levers” that can typically be pulled in pursuit of more sales (read: more revenue)…
So it’s:
- get more opps
- close opps at a higher rate
- close larger opps
The latter two generally have lower ceilings. You can only improve close rates to a certain degree. You can (probably) only increase the average deal size so much (unless you’re ready to start playing a different game with a different product or in a different vertical or a different segment). Are those worthwhile endeavors? Absolutely. Don’t leave any meat on the bone.
[Many will rightly note that decreasing the average sales cycle can increase sales. It can for sure move more sales from tomorrow into today and revenue today is always better than revenue tomorrow. If all that is being accomplished is closing deals sooner, that’s effectively the same revenue just sooner. The big question is, “If the deals are closing sooner, does that mean sellers can work more of them because they have more time available due to more efficient handling of opps?” If yes, then you need more opps…]
But the real game-changing “lever” to pull (for most companies) is getting more opps. Opps are the ultimate governor of success that sets the ceiling for everything else. More opps is generally what moves a company from $1m in revenue to $10m in revenue. And much of that is driven by demand generation that may or not be easily accounted for in the typical view of a sales funnel.
There are various ways to drive getting more opps. Some are more easily in scope with this discussion. Some not so much.
Strategic questions first
Let’s step back for a moment, though, and think bigger picture before looking at optimizing the sales funnel to get more sales.
Step outside the known funnel for a moment.
Start with this line of questioning and then back into the implications based on hypothesis / analysis.
Work through these questions in this order:
- Do you have a hypothesis that there are more opps in your market to be had that you don’t already have in your pipeline? If yes…
- Where are those particular opps? What is the nature of the opps — including the customer and the products/services. New customers? Existing customers? New geos? Existing geos? New products / features? Existing products / features? etc. If you can’t answer these, then there’s a chance you’re assuming that throwing more of this or that at sales & marketing will produce more revenue. Throwing more baseballs at the San Diego Padres doesn’t result in more wins.
- What is the best way for your particular organization to go get those particular opps in what period of time?
The last question will then lead to two different but not mutually exclusive approaches…
Scale existing and/or start new
…You can do both or just one, depending on your strategy.
- Scale existing efforts: What’s working right now? Is it maxed out?
Is marketing delivering? Does marketing think that with more money they could do this even more?
Is sales development delivering? Can more SDRs replicate existing SDR results? Would super-charging SDRs with more/better sales enablement tools take the existing team to the next level?
Are there more opps to be had among existing customers? If so, what’s your current “farming” (account maximization) strategy? Does that need to evolve? Do you need new motions and standards there?
2. Start new efforts: What are you not yet doing that you’d like to?
Are there areas that marketing believes it can generate opps but it hasn’t yet been able to try? Go try it. Test it. Iterate. Ditch it or scale on it.
Do you not yet have full-time SDRs but think that’s the key? Try it, test, iterate ditch it, scale on it, etc.
Do you need more field reps in order to raise awareness and generate demand among untapped accounts? Or do you need more of them in order to get deeper into existing accounts?
Are there marketing initiatives that you previously haven’t been able to to invest in that would move you into new spaces?
Is your team made of up generalists and needs to become more specialized in order to elevate all functions?
And so on.
TL;DR Summary:
- Do you think there are more opps out there?
- Where, exactly? What is the nature of them? Describe them.
- Do you need to scale existing efforts or start new efforts to get them?
