The Amp It Up Fieldbook

11Ramp Up Sales

It can be hard to tell when an organization is ready to ramp up sales and focus on hypergrowth. Until you reach that point, it makes sense to have a sales person who can take on more of a business development role, pinpointing one excellent opportunity at a time. Once your product or service is ready to scale (and not before then), you'll need to have a sales force in place. As you build this team, pay close attention to each individual's progress or lack of progress. If they are not succeeding, what can you do to fix that?

The following activities will help you determine what kind of sales team you need and how to improve their efficiency.

GET THE TIMING RIGHT

It's a mistake to ramp up your sales too early, but if you wait too long, you'll miss key growth opportunities. As you try to determine when the time is right, consider the following questions.

1. Are you happy with your current sales productivity metrics? If not, how can you improve productivity before adding more sales headcount?

    

    

    

2. Are you happy with the metrics of your lead generation pipeline? If not, how can you improve it?

    

    

    

3. Are you being realistic in your timeline of sales targets? Are you projecting too much too soon, or too little too late?

    

    

    

4. Are you being aggressive enough and thinking big enough to outpace your competition? If not, how will you change your sales approach to better align with your strategic goals?

    

    

    

5. Is your sales team buying into your targets and timeline? ...