Description
Raise your hand if your company needs more new customers. I suspect your hand is (figuratively) up. Every business wants to grow. Because you’re reading this book, chances are you don’t want to just grow. You want high growth, explosive growth, the kind of growth that weather satellites can see from space.
Now, raise your hand if prospects are falling over each other in a mad dash to enter the top of your sales funnel. If your account executives are already swigging Gatorade, taking orders, and closing six-figure deals with a sixty-second sales process, this probably isn’t the book for you. If you want to build repeatable sales pipeline and have a make-it-happen mindset, then read on.
If you’re a CEO or if you run a department of sales or marketing, you may be wondering how you can accelerate revenue growth from so-so to stellar. I’m sure you have a fantastic product and great sales team, but perhaps there just isn’t enough activity at the top of the funnel.
You may already be running a sales development group but have a nagging suspicion that somewhere, lurking unseen, inefficiencies are dragging down productivity. Or maybe you’ve been handed the reins of a team and are overwhelmed at where to begin. In either case, this book is here to help.
The success of any company is directly linked to how effectively it acquires new pipeline. Account managers can’t grow accounts and service reps can’t support accounts without net new customers. Not to put too much pressure on you, but everyone at your company’s livelihood depends on how well you build new pipeline. It’s just that important. For you personally, success with sales development isn’t just a stepping stone in your career; it’s a giant leap forward.
To skyrocket growth, I believe sales development is the answer. This book encapsulates my three decades of practical, hands-on experience. At my sales consulting company, The Bridge Group, Inc., my team and I have designed and implemented hundreds of sales development teams. From startup, to scale-up, growth, and global enterprise, we’ve worked with more than 250 technology, life science, and service companies.
Here is how I define sales development:
A specialized role focused on the frontend of the sales process—qualifying inbound leads and/or conducting outbound prospecting—to generate sales pipeline
I was compelled to write this book because of a major problem I’m seeing. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how to “do” sales development. Again and again, I see Company B copying and pasting bits and pieces of what Company A is doing (or, more accurately, what it appears it is doing) and failing to maximize its own results. From the outside, it’s easy to see that a given company (or competitor) has sales development. But it is next to impossible to see why, how, and if that approach is appropriate for you.
I’ve identified six elements for sales development success (see figure I.1).
Figure I.1 – The six elements
My decades of experience as seller, inside sales director, VP of sales, and business consultant have led me to these six elements. I wish I could tell you that one beautiful New England morning, looking out over the lake, I saw the pink light of dawn and inspiration struck. But it didn’t happen like that. The six elements are the byproduct of years of trial and error, witnessing mistakes, decoding success, and working hard with hundreds of smart, hungry client companies. This is a proven system that I’ve deployed with companies you’ve heard of to refocus and redouble growth as well as with companies I’m confident you will be hearing about.
Perhaps you’re already excelling at some of the six elements today. You can achieve lift-off if you execute one or two well. Good strategy and good recruiting, for instance, will deliver some return. You can even produce respectable results by excelling at three or four elements. But if you truly want to nail sales development—if you want to be a legend in building repeatable pipeline and leading a world-class team—all six elements need to be mastered.
Sales development is an “overnight sensation” thirty years in the making. And I’m thrilled that this day has finally arrived. My business card might say “President and Chief Strategist,” but helping companies excel at reaching prospects and generating new pipeline is my passion. In my writing, speaking, and consulting, I’ve seen it time and time again: the companies that master each of the six elements are the ones that generate truly stellar results.
The strategies, stories, examples, and tools you’ll encounter in these pages will take your ability to build pipeline to the next level. Thank you for making the time to take this journey with me.
Remember, your career, your culture, and everyone else’s livelihood is depending on you. Let’s not waste one more minute.