In my experience, most CEO and CFOs biggest pet peeve is unpredictable revenue from the sales team. The blame starts with the sales team, but believe it or not, it is rarely the sales team’s fault. Often, it reflects a revenue engine that lacks structure, alignment, and consistency.
Many businesses have all the necessary components in place, but those components are not organized in a way that allows them to work together effectively. As a result, activity may be high and effort may be constant, yet performance remains difficult to predict or scale.
So, I thought I’d give you some insight into the correct way to structure your revenue engine for predictable results.
The Methodology
The key to predictable revenue is to recognize that it is a team effort. Sales, Marketing, and Operations must be connected and aligned. If they’re not, you will create confusion in you’re your prospects’ mind which will create doubt and impact revenue consistency.
The foundation of your revenue begins with your value. Customers buy your value not your product. Can you articulate your value? Can you tell them what’s in it for them? If not, then that’s where you must start.
Step 1: Define Your Value (Before You Do Anything Else)
Customers buy your value not your product. Sell your value. I see many technical entrepreneurs pitching their product leaving their prospects to figure out why they need it. They’re convinced that their “Baby” is the most beautiful on the earth, when most people think it is ugly. That’s why identifying your value is the most important first step. Figure out why your baby is beautiful from your prospects perspective and sell that.
Here are some questions you must ask yourself:
- Why do my customers buy from me?
- What’s in it for them?
- What business value do they get when they buy my product or service?
- What make us unique?
Once you understand the answers to these questions, the trick is to be able to articulate it in a short sentence providing glimpses of value so that you create curiosity it the right prospect. If you can do this, you’re ready to build predictable revenue.
Step 2: Let Your Value Reveal Your Market (Stop Chasing Everyone)
Once your value is clear, something interesting happens. You don’t need to “figure out your audience” the way most people think. Your value starts acting like a filter and reveals your ideal market / audience / prospects.
Remember this, you don’t want to sell to everybody. We have a saying at GMS, “If you try to sell everything to everyone, you will nothing to anyone”. Your value will help you focus on the prospects that have the most need for what you offer. It will also make it clear which prospects you don’t want to talk to. Why? They won’t connect with your value. That’s OK. Move on.
Predictable revenue doesn’t come from talking to more people, it comes from talking to the right people more consistently.
Step 3: Align the 4 P’s
This is the component that most entrepreneurs miss. Everything looks fine on the surface… but deals feel harder than they should.
That’s usually because one of these is out of sync:
- What you say you deliver (product message) and the Value you provide are out of sync.
- How you price your solution, does not reflect your value. Customer don’t buy on price; they buy on value. If your price is too cheap relative to your value, you may be leaving margin on the table.
- How customers experience working with you (process). Is it easy to do business with you?
- How your team shows up (people). Are you people customer focused or product focused? Does your sales team understand the ins and outs of your ideal prospect after they’ve been filtered by your value.
If these four components don’t line up with your value, you create friction in your sales cycle and your sales conversation, confuse the customer, and create doubt; killing the sale.
Step 4: Define the Sales Conversation (Stop Winging It)
Let me say this clearly. You must prepare your sales conversation. You must understand your customer’s business, and you must shut-up and listen and shut-up and ask questions.
Sales conversations are structured.
Not robotic. Not scripted. Structured.
Are you planning your sales conversation in advance? The glimpses of value in your value message, will reveal the questions you should ask. You should be planning this in advance.
- Can you guess what might be going on in their business based on what points they connected with?
- Do you know the next steps in your sales process?
- Are you uncovering Urgency by asking questions?
- Do you know what questions to ask and at what point?
Step 5: Communicate Your Value (Marketing plan)
You’re now ready to build your marketing plan. Everything is now built to tell your story through all the appropriate vehicles. How do you know what marketing vehicles? They should align with your ideal market. Where do they go for research on solutions? Which social channels work for them?
Follow these four steps:
- Define what you want to say based on your value
- Identify who you’re saying it to
- Communicate through the right channels
- Understand how they prefer to buy
Final Thought
If you find your forecasts are all over the map, and revenue is unpredictable, then you need structure. The method I’ve outlined will build your structure around what your customers and prospect deem most important to them and as a result, they will be curious about you.
Remember, the process:
- Define your Value
- Let your value reveal your ideal prospect
- Align the 4 P’s
- Structure your sales conversation around your value
- Communicate your value through your marketing.
Follow these five steps and you will be well on your way to eliminating friction, and creating predictability in your revenue cycle, and hopefully, you will stop blaming the sales team and make revenue a team effort.
About Author
Robert Kinch is a Managing Partner at Get More Sales, a Fractional Sales company that finds you leads, builds your pipeline and most importantly closes your deals and gets you more sales with less risk. He has over 30 years of experience selling and leading teams at fortune 100 tech companies with proven results. The Get More Sales Predictable Growth Method systematically delivers growth to revenue challenged companies. He has authored 3 books. His book Sales Made Easy or Entrepreneurs, is a top selling book on Amazon.
