Patterns exist in almost all businesses that are stuck between the $1-15 million revenue range. There is a formula that Alex looks for in the sales and marketing engines of the business, and he finds that these businesses are always missing these same things.
Referrals are a huge driver of revenue that most companies are completely overlooking. It’s a high value activity with a low cost attached to it, so there’s no reason that every company should not be leveraging referrals.
Alex recommends spoon feeding your happiest clients an email that they can use to refer people to you. Make it as simple as you can with very little friction.
This same plan of simplicity applies to developing partner channels, however he sees that many companies never map out exactly what needs to happen in the first 6 months of the partnership. Buy-in for any partnership needs to happen, not just at the strategic level, but the boots on the ground need to be bought into the partner programs as well. Incentivizing the boots on the ground.
- Not having a play book for the customer journey mapped out.
- Processes and infrastructure aligned to the sales strategy. Making sure from high level strategy to the tactical parts are in alignment.
- Making sure teams are coached on how to sell and are selling the same way, using the same metrics.
Sales isn’t an art form. It’s a skill set and it can be taught.
Alex’s ninja skill is quickly being able to assess a company and quickly determine what levers to pull in order to gain traction. He’s easily able to identify the gaps in the companies that he works with and solves the problems efficiently.
Create the environment and the mechanism for the sales force to feed information back to the sales and product development teams.
Connect with Alex:
LinkedIn – Alex McNaughten
