aQuity

Strategy Issues – Symptoms and Causes

Recommended further reading on Strategy – BHAG and Good Strategy/ Bad Strategy

Organisational Level

Organisations must have a clear Strategy, with a strong focus on sales. How else do organisations determine where and what to sell and to whom? Could they determine focus and direction without a guiding plan? How would they measure progress and traction? Without a base Strategy, how would they learn what to tweak and change for the next performance period? How would they determine areas of wasted effort and costs, new target markets, challenges and innovation? To paraphrase Richard Rumelt – How do you eliminate the obstacles towards achieving the objectives?

“Sales is the life blood of any organisation.“

Could the Sales Leader mesh with the strategic direction of the other functions without a co-ordinated Sales Strategy? How will the Sales Team be structured, be directed, be measured, responsibilities assigned, target sectors identified, key accounts be nurtured, etc? These matters require a cogent degree of vision, leadership, critical thought, experience, granular analysis and judgement.

We provide many guideposts in the “B2B or Not to B…” eBook.

Personal Level

Large corporates and senior management are responsible for Strategy development and its execution. Frequently, this responsibility falls prey to immediate operational challenges. Strategy development is not the sole domain of management.

If the organisation lacks a clear or coherent Strategy, individuals must take the initiative and develop their own. By taking ownership of their goals and direction, they can ensure progress even in the absence of overarching guidance. This is why we recommend developing a Personal Strategy.

Ultimately, you are in charge of your own domain and answerable for the outcomes. Taking control of your areas of responsibility largely accords with the aQuity methodology relating to taking control of the Client Engagement.

A Personal Sales Strategy identifies the target Clients. It determines the methodology to be followed. It describes the Engagement practices, the Opportunity Management practices and serves as a personal measurement tool and a sales aid. A personal Sales Strategy promotes purpose by instilling disciplined thinking and actions. Professional B2B Closers invariably subscribe to this approach.

Sales Strategy Components

Purpose

We are not too pedantic about the terminology used to describe the various documents or sections of a Sales Strategy or their sequence. The proviso being that:

• It must be easily understood
• It must be coherent
• It must be executable
• It must be conveyable to those involved

Sales Strategy development can sometimes seem disorganised. Assembling individually developed components is often the reason. Alternatively, others may adopt a top-down approach, starting with the framework and gradually filling in the gaps.

We provide a format here that covers the essential ingredients and their purpose. By adapting the recipe to your own situation is great step towards ownership.

Componentry

The prime purpose of a Strategy is to answer a fundamental question. How will we achieve our goals? We summarise some of the essential ingredients required for Strategy development:

👁️ Restatement of the desired outcome – the Goal. This could be broken down into sub-objectives or these could form part of the ‘HOW’. Describe how this adds value to the organisation and the target market. Are there any fundamental drivers of the Strategy and how will the challenges be overcome (specifics)? What’s the challenge, what obstacles need elimination to achieve the critical goal? How does the Sales Strategy align with other functions, like Marketing and Production?

👁️ The underlying, if mute, objectives that govern Sales Strategy development are always and will always be:

• Focusing on our differentiation and impact
• Incremental improvement of the quality of the Sales Forecast content and 
• Securing additional meaningful business

👁️ The specific quantified deliverables with due dates required to achieve the Goal. Prioritise them if appropriate. This is the Sales Plan or the Strategic Execution. Each deliverable needs its own detailed plan that outlines HOW to overcome identified obstacles:

• How will you distribute the objectives among the available resources?
• What additional resources do you need, and how will you redeploy or release surplus resources?
• What measurements and controls will you implement?
• Methods and responsibilities for measuring progress of execution?
• Sales Methodology and Policies

👁️ Detailed plans outlining HOW to realise the deliverables – the Tactical Plan that governs the execution of the Strategy:

• Policy and procedure adaptations.
• Sales Team structure and Training.
• Product focus and development
• Sector focus and development.
• Marketing targets and methods.
• Sales results.
• Partnership alignment.
• Measurement matrices and reporting.

👁️ Other essential components include the development of the Monitoring and Reporting framework, along with the formal Communication and Feedback policies.

Confidence Check

Complex topics can easily bog you down or sidetrack you with details. Having a guiding light helps to avoid complications. Dealing with B2B Strategy issues and developing a Sales Strategy is no exception. A Sales Strategy that takes 19 months to develop may outlive its author’s tenure in the organisation. It often helps to short-circuit back to the basics by posing 3 questions:

• Who are the ideal Clients and what do they typically want to achieve?
• How can you help them achieve and with whom in the the Client organisation?
• How will you know that you are helping them achieve?

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