Revenue growth focused posts

Sherwin’s 10 Deadly Sins of Sales

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During my three decades in sales leadership roles at large enterprises, early-stage growth companies, and my management consulting practice, I have witnessed and corrected many bad sales practices. These practices, if not course-corrected, would lead to zero sales. When they numbered an even ten, they became Sherwin’s 10 Deadly Sins of Sales. Out of the office with senior executives, I would recount them to their great amusement.

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Revenue Growth Architecture

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Accelerated, predictable and sustainable revenue growth requires alignment around an architecture for marketing and sales and a commitment from the senior team. Coordination for buyer engagement across the full-funnel is vital.  A realistic evaluation of capabilities and alignment on revenue strategies is the first step in building a revenue organization to capture customer value.

A $10M B2B tech company is looking to get to the next level of accelerated, predictable and sustainable revenue growth.  The company has been in business for over 10 years, offering a variety of managed services, support services and applications to support IT Infrastructure requirements.  They have about 350 active clients that contribute to the companies ARR revenue base. The customer base is loyal with low attrition and there remains good demand for additional services resulting in a continuous pipeline for “up-sell”.

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Criteria for Objective Software and Solution Selection

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Revenue Technology

Originally published in 2013

An effective revenue architecture takes advantage of a range of leading marketing automation and sales enablement technology solutions. Cloud solutions make some traditional evaluation factors – like technology infrastructure management and application maintenance – less important in selection, yet functional and vendor considerations remain critical.  It is easy to instantly provision cloud solutions and free trial offers often lead to snap decisions. However, a lot of operational disruptions occur from the selecting the wrong solution. Despite being easy to turn on and off from a technical and economic standpoint, the operational impact to a business from migration of data along with organizational disruptions is significant.

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The Problem with Today’s Sales Methodologies

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Good Better Best Sales

 

Face it. Most of the sales methodologies from the 80’s are tired. They do not address what growth companies need today. Growth companies need to shift from using a sales methodology to using a revenue methodology.

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Financial Advisor Smart Book: Revenue Technology Platform

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Professional Selling

Build a technology platform to support your go-to-market strategy.

 

We recently published an enhanced edition of the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. This resource is a comprehensive guide to help independent financial advisors build an ‘independent difference,’ that is, a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:

  • Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
  • Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
  • Increase Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
  • Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.

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Selecting Marketing Automation and CRM Solutions

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Consider Revenue Architecture When Selecting Your Tech Stack

Face it, buyers don’t care whether they are interacting with your marketing or your sales organization, they follow their buying process – often in an unstructured and unpredictable way. They self-sell on the web,  research with influencers, and engage 1:1 with salespeople.   An effective buyer experience across a dynamic buyer’s lifecycle requires that your revenue architecture is designed with a coordinated closed-loop process supported by an integrated technology stack.

We read a lot about Martech and SalesTech stacks. This is understandable because marketing and sales teams have traditionally pursued distinct missions with different needs. Yet if your marketing, sales, and service “front office”  needs to be more integrated to support dynamic buyer pathways, you might need to re-think your technology stack.  An integrated revenue process supported by integrated revenue technology helps deliver a single view of the customer and becomes more responsive and relevant as your buyers jig and jag along their dynamic buying processes.

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Marketer as Producer: Using Storytelling to Engage Customers Effectively

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Cut through the noise.

“If you can’t tell, you can’t sell,” says Storytelling authority Robert McKee.

What’s your definition of a story?  McKee defines it this way: “Sequence of causally connected, dynamic events that changes a person’s life.” Change focuses the mind.

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Do I Really Need Marketing Automation?

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Marketing Automation is of particular value when pursuing a higher volume lead generation or demand generation model.

In a recent Quora post, we answered a question about the value of marketing automation. If you generate – or seek to generate – a high volume of leads (100+s) from the web from self-directed buyers, then yes, you will value having a Marketing Automation platform.

Consider Marketing Automation as part of a broader “technology stack” – there is the “Martech Stack” and the “SalesTech Stack” – we look at these together as the “RevTech Stack”

Their are a number of leading players in marketing automation – Marketo, HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, SharpSpring, Act-On, Infusionsoft, Mautic and others.

Prices range from a few 100 per month to many $1,000s – a lot is based on volumes (size of lists etc), but there are also a wide range of feature sets.

It is difficult to recommend any one system. We use SharpSpring, Pardot, HubSpot and Marketo. All of these are solid systems. Consider the integration and platform ecosystem (e.g. Pardot is part of the Salesforce Cloud).

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Financial Advisor Smart Book: Craft a Distinctive Brand Presence

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Brand Matters

Set yourself apart with an authentic and differentiated brand identity

We recently published the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. This resource is a comprehensive guide to help independent financial advisors build an ‘independent difference,’ that is, a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:

  • Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
  • Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
  • Increase Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
  • Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.

[Strategy 4 of 9] Brand Presence: Craft a Distinctive Brand Identity and Digital Presence

Brand matters, but many advisors look and sound the same. You want your brand identity to tell a story and build trust in the hearts and minds of your prospective clients. Set yourself apart with an authentic and differentiated brand identity, collateral, and digital presence.

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