Tag: Sales

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Business 101

Sales Velocity

What is Sales Velocity?

In simple terms, it’s a measurement of how fast your company is making money. It tells you how fast your leads are moving through your pipeline and getting converted to customers.

Why is Sales Velocity important?

The less time your team takes to convert a lead into a customer the more revenue they are clocking in. So essentially, a higher sales velocity means more revenue in less time.

Hence, it’s the most important metric that you can measure to analyse the performance of your sales force. 

How to measure Sales Velocity?

The four key factors that help you determine sales velocity are as follows:

  1. Number of Opportunities: How many high quality leads your team is working on.
  2. Conversion Rate / Win Rate: The rate at which you are converting your leads. For example, if out of 100 leads 35 get converted into customers then your conversion rate is 35%.
  3. Average Deal Size:  On an average what is the value of a deal that your team works on.
  4. Length of Sales Cycle:  How much time does it take for you to convert a lead into a paying customer.

With the above key factors in place, the sales velocity is calculated as follows:

So for example, you have 100 opportunities in the pipeline with an average deal size of $2000 clubbed with a 25% conversion rate and a sales length cycle of 30 days then your sales velocity is:

Sales Velocity (V) = (Number of Opportunities * Average Deal Size * Conversion Rate) / Length of Sales Cycle

V = (100*2000*0.25)/30 = $1,666.67 

This means you are bringing in roughly $1,666.67 revenue everyday into your business. 

To increase your sales velocity you can either increase the numerator or decrease the denominator or both.

How can I improve my sales velocity?

There are 3 things you can do to start with:

  1. Improve your conversion rate: Make sure you are prospecting your leads correctly and working on leads of good quality with a high probability of conversion.
  2. Shorten your sales cycle:  Audit your sales process and try to identify bottlenecks that are adding to the closure time. Try to eradicate them by revamping your process and/or use software to help speed up the process. The key is, more sales in less time.
  3. Optimise your deal size: We all like high value deals. However, we all know for a fact that larger deals take longer to close. So if your organisation is solely focused on high value deals alone then you will certainly see your sales velocity number plummet. Try to strike a right balance between large and small deals to enable you to derive an optimal sales velocity number.

One last thing

A high sales velocity number means more revenue in less time. However, revenue doesn’t pay bills. Cash does.

So while getting a high sales velocity number is crucial but keeping a laser sharp focus on cash flows is paramount.

Profit is an Opinion. Cash is Fact.  

Categories
Business 101

The 4 P’s of Persuasion

write original, persuasive, natural, useful, informative content - creating content advice - text on a spiral notebook with cup of coffee

Idea in brief

Creating compelling content and copy requires a solid framework.  The absence of a solid framework leads to content that is disorganized. This has an impact on the user experience and understanding. Furthermore, it inhibits their decision making with respect to the action that you are expecting them to take after they have consumed your content.  

The 4 P’s of Persuasion is a framework to formulate persuasive content that caters to the challenge above.

The Slide Deck

The slide below explains The 4 P’s of Persuasion Framework.

The 4 P’s of Persuasion

Categories
Business 101

Design Thinking for Sales Growth

Design Thinking for Sales Growth
Design Thinking for Sales Growth.

Design Thinking for Sales Growth

Idea in brief

As more of our basic needs are met, we increasingly expect sophisticated experiences that are emotionally satisfying and meaningful. These experiences will not be simple products. They will be complex combinations of products, services, spaces, and information.

Design thinking is a tool for imagining these experiences as well as giving them a desirable form.

In this blog post we explain the 5 phases involved in Design Thinking.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. What is Design Thinking?
  2. Why you need Design Thinking?
  3. The phases involved in Design Thinking.
  4. Summary and
  5. Example.

Design Thinking for Sales Growth

Categories
Business 101

Reconstruct the value of your product/service.

Leadership concept with blue paper ship leading among white

Idea in brief

In this blog post we will share a couple of analytical tools that will help you reconstruct the value that your product/service brings to the table thereby enabling you to create uncontested market space and make your competition irrelevant.

With these tools you will not just change the rules but change the game.

The 2 tools we will be outlining are:

  1. The Strategy Canvas and
  2. The 4 Actions Framework.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. What is the Strategy Canvas.
  2. The outcome of implementing a Strategy Canvas.
  3. What is the 4 Actions Framework.
  4. What is the outcome of implementing the 4 Actions Framework.
  5. An example.

Reconstruct the value of your Product/Service

Categories
Business 101

Perceptive Selling

Perceptive Selling

Perceptive Selling

Idea in brief

In the traditional selling method, salespeople are trained to align a solution with an acknowledged customer need and to undermine their competitors solution.

Perceptive selling emphasizes that salespeople must lead with disruptive ideas that will make customers aware of unknown needs.

And in this new world, that’s the difference between a pitch that goes nowhere and the one that secures the customer’s business.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. Traditional Selling.
  2. The current problem with traditional selling.
  3. How does Perceptive Selling solve this problem.
  4. Qualities of a Perceptive Sales Professional.
  5. Partners of the Perceptive Seller within the customers organization.
  6. Bonus Material: A detailed Sales Pitch using the Perceptive Selling Method.

Perceptive Selling

Categories
Business 101

Help Customers Progress

JTBD Framework Simply Sales

Idea in brief

The Jobs To Be Done Framework (JTBD) makes you focus on the underlying job that your customers are trying to complete with your product or service.

Customers buy things because they are facing a problem they would like to solve. With an understanding of the “job (problem)” for which customers find themselves buying a product or service, companies can more accurately develop, market and sell products thereby enabling their customers progress in specific circumstances.  

Because the JTBD framework focuses on the causal driver behind a purchase, we can determine why our customers make the choices they make.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. What is the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework?
  2. Example.
  3. Typical structure of a job which any customer aspires to complete.
  4. The one thing you need to know about JTBD.

The Jobs To Be Done Framework

Categories
Business 101

Measure Customer Happiness

Customer Satisfaction Model by Kano

Idea in brief

The Customer Satisfaction Model by Kano is a method for determining customer happiness towards the features in your product or service.

It can be applied to gauge your customers perception towards existing features of your product/service or towards new features that you intend to introduce.

It’s a seamless collaboration between you and your customers. So the decision taken, as an outcome of this exercise, is an informed one.  This model is data driven, simple and measurable.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. What is the Customer Satisfaction Model?
  2. How can you implement it in your organization and measure the outcome?

The Customer Satisfaction Model

Categories
Business 101

Integrating Sales and Marketing in SMB’s

Integrate-Sales-And-Marketing

Integrate Sales And Marketing

Idea in brief

The sales and marketing teams of your business shouldn’t just co-exist.

Instead, they should seamlessly work together and create value for the company and for the customer.

The Slide Deck

The slide deck below covers the following:

  1. Why the Sales and Marketing teams of a company should work together?
  2. Why don’t they get along?
  3. How can organizations make them get along and finally
  4. A couple of commonly asked questions along with their answers.

Integrate Sales and Marketing Functions in SMB’s