Setting up the sales process and outreach approach

These are challenging times for everyone, and most companies are seeking ways to navigate through the crisis or deadlock. Every day, we receive numerous requests for sales department audits from companies of various sizes and complexities. Initially, Alex Co-Founder & CRO with Sales Label and I thought it was due to the market crisis, prompting everyone to rebuild and change their sales strategies to survive. However, in reality, IT companies were operating in this format before the crisis, during the crisis, and the majority continue to do so after the crisis.

At Sales Label Consulting, we only deal with IT companies; our funnel consists of 99% software businesses because we have precise expertise and understanding of their issues. However, a couple of clients who recently wanted to change their sales department and make it better didn’t come from IT. The first company deals with traffic sales, and the second company is a foundation seeking donors worldwide.

At first, we didn’t even understand why they chose us to help them. But in our dialogue, they explained that the way sales departments are organized in IT companies has no equivalent in their fields or types of companies to serve as an example for implementation. This clarified to us that essentially, while IT companies have complex processes for client interaction in terms of product development, the sales process itself is not easy either. So, in most other companies, the sales process becomes more complicated, and communication with clients doesn’t seem as straightforward and easy when it comes to closing deals. Learning and adaptation are necessary.

The structure of a sales department

The structure of a sales department primarily comprises people selling to other people. This is where most scalability issues stem from. Then the sales department is structured according to the individual functions of the sales process, delegating tasks and responsibilities accordingly. Ultimately, a sales department becomes effective when individuals with balanced experience, hard and soft skills, are in their positions, utilizing scalable processes with tools that help them achieve better results. Typically, in an IT company, the sales department consists of 2 to 15 people for a company size of 300 employees. In other types of businesses, as mentioned earlier, for example, a foundation, there might be 30 sales managers and 1 supervisor for a company of 40 people. That’s the model, that’s the format of operation. Most IT companies get stuck in a setup where one sales manager, starting as a newcomer, gains knowledge from the company and the market over 2-4 years, then sells and manages clients further. This sales manager divides their energy and experience into two parts of the process, unfortunately, in most cases that we observe in our consulting practice, such teams fail to make progress in new sales and fail to make progress in client retention. They find themselves at a crossroads and cannot transition from one process to another because acquiring new deals depends on understanding the market and what new offerings can be made, while customer success, when the development process has started, consists of systematic control over the development process with proposals for improvements.

How Head of Sales perceive the problem in the short-term

Primarily, the main request for a consulting project with Sales Label Consulting is to improve conversion rates in outreach campaigns. As a short-term plan, this satisfies everyone within the company, providing a sense of control over what’s happening and further instilling faith in the company’s future development. It’s generally the right strategy if it doesn’t stop at just reviewing sales activities. Often, by improving metrics, we only get a breath of fresh air, but that feeling quickly dissipates when algorithms for automation change the next month, or a LinkedIn profile gets blocked, or emails end up in spam. The job entails identifying a set of short-term problems that need to be addressed and gradually transitioning them into a year-long process of enhancing departmental performance without sudden spikes or drops in metrics.

How CEOs view the problem in the long-term

In an ideal world, any CEO would want channels to yield predictable results. If a sales channel fails to generate new sales for a year while still being allocated a budget, it’s not a sound strategic policy. Most IT company CEOs don’t want to engage in strategic planning because the market changes every month, making it difficult to plan beyond three months ahead. Nevertheless, everyone wants to work with major clients, but they lack an understanding of how to build relationships with them. Not comprehending how different channels work, their short-term or long-term conversion rates with various approaches and costs, forces IT company CEOs to operate within just two or three channels. The first, the cheapest and least effective, is outreach. The second is the more expensive one, such as Upwork and its counterparts, and the third is SEO, which is time-consuming and less predictable. However, they usually opt for the most effective and predictable one – Upwork. Working there, they forget about developing the others after six months, and once the primary channel stops working, they either chaotically develop outreach or hastily embark on trips. This immediately undermines the entire framework of operation.

How C-level want to address the problems

Primarily, they want to remedy sales issues with time. Let’s wait a bit longer, let’s take another look here – and by this method, they push themselves into even bigger problems. Recognizing the problem is already part of its solution, especially in sales. Unfortunately, most are reluctant to address issues because they directly involve specific individuals who are part of or manage the sales process. From our consulting experience, the main problem typically lies within the processes initially. If a manager is willing to change and adapt, they can adjust to any process. Therefore, we start our projects with an analysis of the department, focusing primarily on the processes, and only then assess the roles’ alignment with these processes. It often happens that highly skilled specialists are hired for very young sales processes. These specialists want to showcase their knowledge by providing complex interaction models, intricate processes, and elaborate deal-closing methods, while management simply wants quick sales. Consequently, management may think strategically, but the constant need is for tactical work. Such a composition also introduces disharmony in overall sales results. The word “strategy” for many IT companies mainly pertains to management, and no one outside the narrow circle within the IT company has ever seen or heard of it. Often, sales managers don’t know the strategy, plans, or expectations; they just do their job and want to sell as much as possible to shed the label of “not selling.” We also help large IT companies and small IT startups correctly focus their roles to achieve maximum results.

Available methods

The ideal way is to conduct an annual check-up of your sales department’s condition and invite trusted specialists and colleagues. It’s beneficial to work together on strategy and focus more on implementation rather than endless planning and the quest for new tools. From our experience, over 40% of ideas have not been implemented, indicating either an overloaded and unbalanced sales department or an inability to handle such tasks. Control and implementation are always essential to maintain separately, tracking key indicators for the sales department. Individually or collectively, we observe how each person works and operates, but seeing the bigger picture as a whole is our main task in the consulting business, which we have successfully developed for over 7 years. From our examples, a company that was at the peak of its development in terms of time and competence sought our help because they knew that their main client would be leaving shortly, and their revenue would drop by 40%. They prepared in advance with us, reinvested their money in expanding the sales department, increasing the throughput of each channel, and implemented a plan for sales department development and a separate department for working with key clients. You can read about our case studies here.

How we work with this

Most requests do not meet our qualifications. This is because sometimes we also cannot help our clients solve their problems. We are a consulting company that primarily works with IT companies because we understand business well and understand the role of each participant in the sales process. Requests that do not meet our qualifications are often from companies that are already in a practically unprofitable format and want to solve the problem super quickly, almost instantly, which is generally an unsolvable task in our case and experience. We work with companies that want to move away from such situations where everything is pushed to the extreme and becomes uncontrollable. We help companies make their sales department confident in achieving results, rather than relying on guesswork from month to month. We create sales departments that are not called Rock Stars; we create sales departments that bring expected results with people who love their work and love to work. Come to us for a consultation, and we’ll think about how we can make your process better, and most importantly, more transparent for your expectations. Book a call here or through the contact form. See you soon!