Sales to a business organisation is like breathing to a human body. To grow any business, it needs to ‘breathe’ more effectively.
Neither companies nor humans would survive without this permanent exchange with the outside world. Therefore, a frequent question of any manager is how the sales organisation should be structured to satisfy this natural demand.
Let’s look at the 3 basic options to consider.
1. ORGANIC GROWTH BY HIRING MORE SALES REPS
This is usually the first option that comes to people’s minds.
A kind of linear thinking ingrained in our brains telling us that more sales reps means selling more. On an emotional level, more internal competition can add an extra quantum to performance.
Also, some managers feel more important with larger teams. But the other side of this coin is more personnel costs, sometimes a lengthy hiring process, lengthy learning curve, and risk that the new employees might not live up to the expectations raised in the initial interviews.
2. ORGANIC GROWTH BY TRAINING
Although this is very effective, several companies are reluctant to accept it for 2 reasons.
First, some seasoned employees feel no need to accept additional training. Second, many sales reps claim the last training fizzled out rather quickly.
The first argument is very subjective and therefore it’s hard to fight the lack of willingness to learn new skills or refresh forgotten ones.
Being short-lived is a common opinion of sales training, but it is quite easy to solve. A ‘cookie-cutter’ training method doesn’t bring much value and can quickly evaporate. Therefore, SBR eliminates this danger by a 3-phase approach:
a) discovering the skills, systems, and habits that need improvement
b) tailoring the training to these needs and
c) ongoing coaching so that the newly acquired knowledge becomes a permanent habit.
The results speak for themselves! Click here to watch our most recent video case study
3. CHANNEL BUSINESS
The most appealing and frequent impression from Channel (or Partner) Business,
or in other words, another company is selling for you – this proves to be heavily oversimplified.
When considering channel business, we tackle questions like:
Q: Shall we be 100% channel-driven? If yes, then,
- How do we handle the dependency of our partner companies?
- What will be driving our partners to do their business with us?
Q: How can we receive trustworthy market feedback to strengthen our USPs?
Q: If we go for a mixed direct / channel approach,
- How do we handle likely conflicts with direct vs. channel for some customers?
- What is the optimal revenue ratio of direct vs. channel?
Q: In both cases,
- How do we select the right partner for us?
- How can we make our partners feel like they’re part of the family?
- Should we grant exclusive / non-exclusive distribution?
- Which territories (local or abroad) should be partner-driven?
- What is the optimal margin for our partners?
- How to ensure our partners are properly trained, both technically and sales-wise?
- How to run them, and join them with finance or marketing?
- …
Channel business, when working, is a fantastic multiplier of sales resource that hardly any company can create internally.
All the aspects above indicates that this decision is not simple and that they will need to be corrected over time.
Partnering is convenient when extending business into other countries. A local company equipped with the language skills, knowledge of local habits and business relationships seems like the right choice for international growth. But still, each of the questions above also indicates a risk which channel business can bring.
A consulting company that has experience in both organic and channel-driven growth can help make the best fitting decision. Abraham Maslow should have coined the phrase, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
To avoid this danger, SBR Consulting have mastered several tools to be able to find out the best growth strategy for its customers.
To talk to us more about improving your sales, please get in touch by emailing info@sbrconsulting.com or call us on +44 (0) 207 653 3740.
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