If you want to make more money, you need to look at how you are harvesting the opportunities within your key accounts and across your sales territories!
Research shows that World Class Sales Organizations performed 25% better on key sales metrics by using sales planning methods like these:
Using specific criteria to define a strategic account
Having a method for deciding on opportunities to pursue
Allocating the right resources to pursue large deals
Being highly effective at advancing opportunities
Leveraging the best practices of top performers
(Source: Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study)
Sales organizations can maintain top performance by consistently developing and effectively executing sales plans for all of their accounts, opportunities and territories. Salespeople who handle account planning well are 41% more likely to achieve quota, according to the TAS Group.
If you sell in any of these types of settings, then doing a better job of sales planning will translate into higher sales:
As posted on the Selling Power Blog March 3, 2015.
How can you best manage your sales territories? Here are seven steps you can use to get the best results from each sales territory.
1. Establish a process.
Determine how you will establish and monitor the progress of territory plans each quarter. A clear set of action steps helps each member of the team understand what’s expected as the quarter unfolds. This includes having territory managers:
create and update territory plans
and review the plans at the regional and then national levels.
Support, marketing, and other functions should be included in review sessions as appropriate. In addition, you need to include steps to maintain continuity from quarter to quarter, such as working on territory, account, and opportunity plans that take longer than one quarter to implement.
Success in selling to your most important accounts requires a team approach.
Whether you classify customers as “strategic, major, key, target, or focus,” your probability of success in meeting your goals with an account will increase substantially when you assemble a team of supporting resources to supplement the work of the Account Manager.
The Account Manager and a supporting cast of sales, technical specialists, and other internal and external resources working together will result in the greatest return from your relationship with your important customers. The customer’s cross-functional decision teams will find value from this approach too, as the “right” resources are applied to addressing all business issues related to a purchase from all impacted groups.
This is a summary of an interview with Victoria Hibbits, VP of Imaging Sales, Government and Complex Accounts at McKesson.
Victoria Hibbits is the VP of Imaging Sales, Government and Complex Accounts at McKesson. She is responsible for Government and Key Accounts for Imaging Workflow Solutions. She has played leadership roles, directing national account and government account efforts at a number of other medical equipment manufacturers, including Siemens, Acuson, Stentor and Vital Images.
Here is what she had to say about the importance of account management and how to do it effectively.
Tim Henning is a Senior Sales Leader with 25+ years of experience in the medical capital equipment space, leading sales efforts for Philips Medical, ADAC Laboratories, DFINE and Alliance Imaging. He helped ADAC earn the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award and he has transformed many poor sales performers into winning teams, leading them to peak levels of sales excellence.
Here are the highlights of an interview in which Tim gives his take on the pay-offs and the challenges that come with sales territory management.
Talk with Ron Snyder, President of Plan2Win Software and Sales Management Consultant, about how to incorporate Account and Territory Planning and Strategic Management Best Practices into your approach to drive sales growth.
For the past 20+ years, Ron has helped companies dramatically improve their sales results, including:
Achieving sales targets
Generating qualified leads
Improving conversion rates
Accelerating sales process velocity
Controlling costs of sales
The companies he has helped include industry leaders, such as HP, Cisco, Siemens, Philips, Alliance Imaging, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, Adobe and rapidly-growing companies such as Beyond Trust, Zeus Technology and Zonare.
While at Hewlett-Packard, Ron was consistently recognized as a top performer in sales, marketing and management roles related to computer, software and medical solutions.
“Are your territories managing you… or are you managing your territories?”
This is a question that has helped improve the results of many sales organizations.
We have worked with many senior sales executives who have set up, ramped up and turned around a number of sales organizations; enabling them to achieve dramatic growth even in tough selling environments. One of the common elements of their systems for sales success is installing a good territory management process and template to ensure the sales team is making the most of the opportunities in their areas of responsibility; including territories, vertical markets and channel partners.
Further, it is important to always look for ways to “connect the dots”… to understand what was happening in a territory, who the power brokers are, how they affect opportunities across the territory and how to leverage our contacts to make progress in target accounts and sales opportunities.
If you want to make more money, you need to look at how you are harvesting the opportunities within your key accounts and across your sales territories!
Research shows that World Class Sales Organizations performed 25% better on key sales metrics by using sales planning methods like these:
This is a question that has helped improve the results of many sales organizations.
We have worked with many senior sales executives who have set up, ramped up and turned around a number of sales organizations; enabling them to achieve dramatic growth even in tough selling environments. One of the common elements of their systems for sales success is installing a good territory management process and template to ensure the sales team is making the most of the opportunities in their areas of responsibility; including territories, vertical markets and channel partners.
Further, it is important to always look for ways to “connect the dots”… to understand what was happening in a territory, who the power brokers are, how they affect opportunities across the territory and how to leverage our contacts to make progress in target accounts and sales opportunities.
