A Sales Guy Growth Doesn’t Come From Sales

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Growth doesn’t come from sales. You can’t grow your business through your sales organization. Sales is not a growth engine. Sales is the accelerant or the amplifier. Sales takes what you have and amplifies it to your customers. If you don’t have good products, sales isn’t going to help you. If you are in a declining industry, sales isn’t going to help you grow. If the organization is bureaucratic and has inefficient processes, sales can’t help you. Sales doesn’t help you grow. Sales takes the things that will help you grow and makes them grow bigger and faster.

Too many companies look to their sales organization for growth. They look at their numbers and say we need to grow by 10% and then pass that number to the sales team. And why not? It’s easy to do. The sales team has the apparent numbers. They actually bring in the revenue. What’s missing in this approach is the sales team has very little to do with operations. They don’t build the products. They don’t create the processes. They don’t build the business models. Sales takes what you have to market.

If you want to grow your business don’t look to sales. To grow your business look at your products, are they a quantum leap above your competitors products? Look to customer service, do you provide an industry leading customer experience? Look to your market, are you the only player in a growing niche market or are you just another player in mature market. To grow, look at operations. Is your company efficient in it’s use of capital. Are you easy to do business with? Are you the markets first choice? To grow, look to your employees. Do they like working for you? Do you have the most talented people in your industry? Is your company, the company people are clamoring to work for? If you want to grow your business look to these things. Stop looking at sales.

If you want to grow your business, don’t look at sales, look at everything else. Once you’ve done that, take it to sales and ask: “what can you do with this”.

If you have the right sales team, the answer should be, “We could blow it up!” like any good accelerant.

http://www.ipbridges.com/ ncon

I agree Jim…and not many companies get this.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

And to their detriment. Ask Detroit.
Keith

Good post, Jim! While we can always improve sales effectiveness, just improving sales effectiveness will always have limited relative impact on sales! Worse, squeezing and berating sales people may cause a one or two quarter nudge of sales results, but will never overcome major limitations in your product or business.

Great sales years are a result of having a great solution, a highly effective sales team, and an organization that knows how to support both.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Thanks Keith, You summed it up here far better than my post. That
seems to be how it is has always gone. Well said.
http://closingbigger.net/ Shane Gibson

Sales is a label for connecting with people, persuading people, finding a need and filling it. It's about listening, empathy, courage and solving problems. I think what you may be talking about is a siloed type of sales or a group labeled sales. Sales is life, everyone is in sales, those skills can be used by an engineer at BMW to persuade production or for an accountant to sell the board on a new budget or investment in a customer service strategy.

Sales can solve all problems pointed in the right direction. Everyone needs to sell.

Just my opinion of course!

Cheers,

Shane
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Nice point Shane, per my tag-line, . . . at the end of the day,
everything is sales.

I think I should have posed the statement differently, however the
conversation has been fun. (lot's of it on LInkedIN Salesblogcast
group)

Thanks
http://cindyking.biz/ Cindy King

Hi Jim, Some interesting thoughts and discussion here.

I think the growth of a business first starts with a great offer. You either have something that others want to buy or you don't. But the value of this “something” also depends on how you offer it and who you offer it to.

Sales people definitely have the information needed to create a great offer. But you also need vision to grow a business. So sales people are not the only ones.

I do think that companies need to work with their sales teams much more than they do… as you state in your article it's not a question of dumping the ball in the sales court.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Cindy,

It does start with the offer. I've never heard a start-up say; “we've got this great sales team, now we just need something to sell.”
Metamitch

Sales is an incredibly under-rated business activity – as someone else commented, business begins when a sale (transaction) takes place. The vast majority of people remember a movie firstly due to the actors and actresses (the sales people) but only a minority remember the Art Directior; Cinematographer; Costume Designer; Director; Film Editor; Makeup; who wrote the Original Score; Sound Editor; Sound Mixer; Visual Effects person; or the Writer – these people in a business may be the CEO; Marketing Manager; Pre-sales; Product Manager; Services Manager; Technical Support person; Accounts Payable; Warehouse Manager. etc. None of these people can achieve business growth by themselves – they all need an effective sales team to do that for them. If all these people are all working together to the same mantra then YES sales can deliver growth. Nowadays the other avenues for growth is via acquisition – buying market share. Sales people are under-rated; under appreciated and under paid – selling is a true profession.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

a great actor can't save a shitty film.
Metamitch

Sales is an incredibly under-rated business activity – as someone else commented, business begins when a sale (transaction) takes place. The vast majority of people remember a movie firstly due to the actors and actresses (the sales people) but only a minority remember the Art Directior; Cinematographer; Costume Designer; Director; Film Editor; Makeup; who wrote the Original Score; Sound Editor; Sound Mixer; Visual Effects person; or the Writer – these people in a business may be the CEO; Marketing Manager; Pre-sales; Product Manager; Services Manager; Technical Support person; Accounts Payable; Warehouse Manager. etc. None of these people can achieve business growth by themselves – they all need an effective sales team to do that for them. If all these people are all working together to the same mantra then YES sales can deliver growth. Nowadays the other avenues for growth is via acquisition – buying market share. Sales people are under-rated; under appreciated and under paid – selling is a true profession.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

a great actor can't save a shitty film.

Growth Doesn’t Come From Sales

Keenan 411

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