At Acquirent we participate in all varieties of ongoing training to include a book club. Recently we read Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross, which describes the processes he implemented to help Salesforce.com add an extra $100 million in revenue in the early years of the company.
We created this blog series to save you time from having to read the book yourself (although it’s a short book, who has time to read these days?) and to list the takeaways and best practices from the book that we’re putting into practice, which we encourage you to put into practice. This first installment in this series is by Nick Hogren, we’ll post one installment a week on Friday.
Predictable Revenue begins by addressing some historical sales philosophies and offering alternative thinking. One historical sales methodology is that expanding sales teams will lead to growth in revenue. Predictable Revenue offers an alternative concept revolving around developing a system that creates growth through the following concepts: predictable lead generation, bridging the gap between marketing and sales and the creation of a consistent process.
One core concept of Predictable Revenue is specialization. Separate your sales team into specialized roles: outbound lead generation, inbound lead generation, small business account executives and enterprise business account executives. Use tools like email and marketing to generate predictable results and warm leads for sales reps. These tools should be the focus of your sales reps activities instead of cold calling. Your sales reps will be more efficient and create a consistent process with predictable results. Test your process and try new approaches until you get the results you are looking for. The goal is to help your sales reps become more efficient. Make sure you develop a target customer profile and don’t waste time prospecting low conversion rate prospects. This will help improve your process and create predictable revenue.
Another key to efficiency with specialization is the “hand off” between sales reps. A customer should be handed off when a series of qualifiers are met. For instance, a sales rep in a lead generation role should pass off a prospect to an account executive only when that prospect fits the following criteria: target customer profile match, discussion with decision maker complete and clear interest and fit from the customer.
Each specialized sales role should follow a series of stages to clearly define each step of the process and when a customer should be handed off. Some example stages are cold, working, nurturing and avoid. Each stage should have defined steps, qualifiers and disqualifiers. This will help your team create a consistent process that leads to predictable revenue.[/fusion_text][separator style_type=”none” top_margin=”” bottom_margin=”30″ sep_color=”” border_size=”” icon=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” width=”” alignment=”center” class=”” id=””][one_half last=”no” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ class=”” id=””][imageframe lightbox=”no” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”dropshadow” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”center” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] 
[/imageframe][/one_half][one_half last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ class=”” id=””][fusion_text]Nick Hogren is a Sales Manager at Acquirent. Nick Hogren has 10 years of experience in building, coaching and leading sales teams. Today Nick leads multiple sales teams for Acquirent’s client accounts.[/fusion_text][/one_half][/fullwidth]
