Selling Through Someone Else: How to Use Agile Sales Networks and Partners to Sell More

Chapter 2

The Solution—Agile Selling

Growth Can Come from Investing in Your “Selling Force,” Not Just Your “Sales Force”

Robert Wollan

 

Chapter Summary

• Sales organizations have not shown sustainable improvements in core sales metrics (overall conversion, quota attainment, retention) in the past five years. It is time to try something different.
• Most companies look at their competitors for innovation ideas, and miss the opportunity to adopt better ideas from other industries. Start by looking at industries with more complex markets and selling environments than your own. What are their secrets to success in driving profitability?
• Agile Selling—the next evolution of the selling model—builds on your current distribution strengths, but recognizes the role that customers, social media, employees, and other key influencers have on the sales process.
• Well-performing sales organizations get seven things right that can be applied across industries and around the world.

Given the challenges discussed in Chapter 1, business as usual is virtually guaranteed to be a recipe for sales teams that will be either too slow, too poorly armed, in the wrong place (or all of the above) to compete in changing markets. On the other hand, leaders who adapt quickly can grab market share and expand faster. Today's market is very much about the shift from “the big eating the small” to “the fast eating the slow.”

As we've studied and worked with a vast array of B2B companies around the world, we've recognized ...