System four
Sales Organization.
Can the team convert interested leads at a reasonable rate? It covers who is on the team, the process and playbook they work from, and how they are paid.
Why it matters.
Sales is where a miss becomes visible, so it is usually the first system to be blamed and the first to be changed. Many companies have replaced the sales leader at least once before we arrive, and the number still misses, because the cause sat upstream or in how the team was set up to sell.
When the cause does sit here, it is usually in the process rather than the people. A pipeline with no criteria for moving a deal from one stage to the next lets weak deals sit in the forecast and makes coverage look healthier than it is.
What it covers.
Sales Organization has four parts, and each has its own page.
Building the sales team.
Who sells, who manages them and whether the team is built for the deals the company actually needs to win.
Process and playbook.
How a deal moves from first conversation to signature, and the playbook that makes it repeatable.
Compensation plans.
How the team is paid, and whether the plan rewards the deals the company wants.
Outbound systems.
The sequences, tools and cadence the team uses to create its own pipeline, and the rules for who works which accounts.
What we look at in the Diagnostic.
We listen to recorded calls, sit in on pipeline reviews and spend time alongside the sellers. We read the CRM for how deals move and where they stall, and we read the compensation plans against the behavior they produce. We also spend two hours with each revenue executive, using a structured method drawn from forensic interviewing that separates what a person observed from what they concluded.
What we rebuild.
In a turnaround engagement, an operator who has run a sales organization sits over it. We set the stages and the criteria for moving between them, rewrite the playbook by running it and rework compensation where it pays for the wrong deals. When the team itself needs rebuilding, our full-time recruiter hires an enterprise sales organization from the top down, and the playbook goes into the operating system so the new team can run it after we leave.
The other systems.
Commercial Strategy.
Are you selling the right offer to the right customers at the right price, and approaching them in the right order?
Brand Platform.
Is the offer presented so that it connects with the right customers and they get it?
Demand Generation.
Is the offer getting in front of enough customers and causing them to express interest?
Retention & Expansion.
Do customers stay and buy more?
The Revenue System.
Can the company see which of these is failing?
The Diagnostic
Start with what is true.
The Diagnostic examines Sales Organization fourth, in eight weeks at a fixed fee of $95,000.