Sales Performance Associates LLC

As a member of your media technology company's senior management team, you face a variety of challenges. You must...

• Gain competitive market share
• Drive revenue
• Control costs and
• Generate profits for your stakeholders

If you've invested in product development wisely, the biggest factor influencing success is the effectiveness of your sales and tactical marketing team.

Yet we find a large number of media technology companies fall short of the best sales and marketing practices when compared to companies in other industry sectors.

Do You Have a Sales Conditioning Problem?

Sales conditioning deficiencies are easy to spot. They include:

• Inaccurate or inconsistent sales and revenue forecasts
• Major forecast deals you thought were "in the bag" are lost at the last minute
• Decreasing customer retention rates, channel partner revenues and/or market share
• Unacceptably high number of deals lost to competitors or no decision
• Unacceptably low number of net new sales
• Poor or unknown quality of sales pipeline
• Sales cycle time increasing while closing percentages decreasing
• Excessive discounting required to close deals
• Sales cost increases outpacing sales margins
• Senior management being called in to 'save' deals at the last minute
• Sales managers that perform as super salespeople instead of managers

Many senior media technology executives have risen through the technical or engineering ranks. For them corporate management is a skill more easily mastered than marketing voodoo or the dark arts of sales. You may know you have a sales problem, but not know how to solve it.

The Sales Landscape Has Changed

Your customers have become more advanced. The Internet, the current economic turmoil and the dynamic changes in content delivery models have tilted the balance of power toward buyers. Your prospective customers have far more competitive and product information available to them now than just five years ago. Often they are well ahead of your sales team before they make first contact or you find they are actively looking for solutions like yours.

Your sales management team also faces a new set of challenges. Most media technology companies promote their top sales people into sales management. These new managers are expected to perform as managers with little or no training or processes to support the new role. They don't have the skills or processes required to coach the sales team. Instead they function as super salespeople - racing from sales rep to sales rep trying to rescue out-of-control deals.

Front-line Salespeople Lack Basic Modern Selling Skills

The complex media technology industry demands sales people that have built-in technical expertise. Most are subject matter experts - inside salespeople, customer support staff, engineers, super-users, technically-proficient industry insiders or even individuals recruited from your customer base. Although technically knowledgeable, they typically lack any modern, professional selling skills. As a result, they have trouble translating technical features and benefits into value propositions that resonate with senior non-technical managerial, operational or financial executives. They may be unable to navigate wide enough and deep enough in an account to cover everyone that can influence a buying decision. They may not have a sales manager that can continually review their opportunities and coach them to win.

Sales and Marketing Conditioning

Sales Performance Associates helps growing media technology companies achieve sustainable, repeatable and predictable revenue growth by improving sales and marketing processes, methods and execution. Our unique sales conditioning approach helps clients identify more and better sales opportunities; improve the size, qualification and velocity of their pipeline; enhance sales forecast accuracy; win more competitive opportunities; grow business within existing accounts and upgrade overall sales and marketing execution and efficiency.

We address the full range of tactical marketing and sales operations - from demand creation through to close. Sales conditioning starts with a Strategic Assessment workshop with your senior management team to define the who, what, where, why and how of your sales challenges. Then we deliver a comprehensive report of indicated improvements, a best practices sales process map and a customized plan to deliver the highest return in the shortest time. We work with your "live" deals in coaching and training workshops to make new methods and tactics immediately relevant. And to assure adoption, our program includes on-demand opportunity coaching and recurring training to reinforce the new methods.

Action Item: Schedule a Sales Conditioning Check-up

Your sales and marketing team doesn't need training...they need sales conditioning. Click here to schedule a no-obligation 20 to 30 minute telephone conversation to discuss your situation.

Let's see where we can help.