Genesis is a pure-play B2B company selling solutions. In our quest for growth we asked ourselves the following question:
- add sales people ?
OR - leverage the best sales talent we already possess ?
Our sales talent needs to do 3 things basically. More or less 1/3 of their time is spent on the following.
1. Admin of some sort (system design, expenses, email replies,…)
2. Prospecting for new opportunities (projects, clients, applications, relationships,…)
3. Magic moments. Spend time building relationships and developing opportunities with existing customers (when the magic happens)
At Genesis we have chosen to leverage the best sales talent we have.
Statistics really…
Multiply guaranteed success vs multiplying the number of gambles…
Using dedicated software has helped us leverage the success of our best sales talent as follows:
A. Reduce admin time and effort.
So more valuable time is freed up for prospecting and magic moments.
- find information faster
- easy system design and accumulative learning (templates and sharing of best practices)
- clients can self-serve (getting information, initial system design/spec,…;
B. Optimise prospecting for new opportunities (data leads us to insights…):
- premium homes = the opportunity
- visionary architects = the creator
- best-in-class installers of technology = the craftsman
C. More magic moments…
- tailored system designs – The difference between style and fashion is quality. (Giorgio Armani)
- perfect timing – A wizard is never early. He is never late. He is always perfectly on time. (Lord of the Rings)
- Gamification of our work-life – badges, leaderboards and fun trips for our loyal partners.
Leveraging your best sales people is always a good idea (small a-teams run circles around large abc-organizations…) but has proven to work especially well in the following scenarios:
- Selective distribution: grow via a select group of partners (relationships and insights are key)
- Moving from product to system sales (systems are sum of products + knowledge + services and tailored to specific opportunities)
- When good and experienced are in short supply
- When it takes a long time to train new salespeople
Small decision that get us to where we want to be.
The choice is (y)ours. as always.
Note: more on where to start your digital transformation journey in this post.