It’s that time of the year again. You know, when you’re crazy busy trying to get all your tasks finished so you can check them off against your annual goals. The time when you’re trying to tie up the loose ends so you can, maybe, just once, not work during the days off you have scheduled which you were forced to take off or loose.
It’s that time again. Yep, the end of the year. And, it’s time to look forward. How are you planning to add value next year? What are you thinking you should do differently? How will you grow? I have an idea. How about a realignment evaluation. I recommend taking a step back and doing an inventory. An inventory? Yep. One that has you going around and pulling together every piece of collateral, every PowerPoint presentation, every ROI calculator, every pitch sheet, and every other piece of marketing collateral that sales uses. In fact, ask the sales teams to share their most effective tools. There’s a better than even chance that they are using tools you don’t even know about it.
So, you ran around and did your inventory and uncovered oodles and oodles of tools your sales team uses. Great. Now comes the work. Take the time and map each tool’s purpose with a stage in your buyers’ process. Don’t know your buyers’ process – GET OUT OF THE OFFICE AND ASK THEM! This is where your ongoing market visits come into play.
Align the tools against the process. If the tool doesn’t fit where it’s being used, note that. And, keep doing this until you can map every piece against every stage. Then, look at where the gaps are. This is an easy way for you to see what tools would be beneficial to helping your buyers. As you start to work on your goals for next year, you can easily add value by filling in those gaps.
And, finally, plan a new sales training program. One that takes the right tools against the right buying stage. Take this training to the sales team. True, for some it will be a review, but not for all. Staying in front of the sales team to enable them to achieve means you will achieve…and add value.
Looking in from the outside, now is the time to prove your value. This is an easy task that when done correctly creates a win – for everyone.
