1. Are all top-line leaders engaged with and benefiting by the sales team’s efforts and results?
2. Does your firm have a plan to increase market share when the economy changes course?
3. Does your firm understand when it’s time to move from sales to account management?
4. Do you have competition that is trying to commoditize the product set to establish a price advantage?
5. Is your company considering spending money on marketing intelligence to gauge branding alignment and customer satisfaction?
6. Is your company in need of improved product management?
7. Are you struggling with communication silos between operations, sales, finance, service?
8. Are margins increasing at point of sale or are you having to lower internal costs to increase margins?
9. Has your sales approach remained the same for more than five years?
10. Does the cost of sales increase and decrease in line with company profitability?
11. How many of your key accounts include your sales team in their annual planning?
12. Is your customer retention as valuable as new client acquisition…is farming more profitable than hunting?
13. If you have multiple product/service offerings, are you experiencing double digit growth in client adoption?
14. Are you achieving reduced cost of new client acquisition or is this cost remaining high?
15. Has sales management adopted the need for having both “hunters” and “farmers,” or favoring one over the other in the environment?
16. Are you struggling to break into a new market, such as enterprise accounts from the SMB space?
17. Does your sales team have SOPs for tactical topics, such as territory management, large account planning; green-field strategies; Selling to the C-suite?
18. Is there a clear career path for sales resources in your firm?
If one feels all that sales needs is a good “program,” whether it be a customer loyalty campaign, any one among the plethora of “sales-training programs” or a new CRM, Paradigm Consulting is not the answer. We believe some of these programs are excellent but what’s needed first is foundational.