Are you ready for the big time?

The time comes when a company needs to make a step-change in sales. It may be at second-round funding, when it needs to move from the first few, hand-crafted deals to a solid flow of orders, or it may be as a result of investment becoming available. Whatever the reason, this is not “business as usual”. Creating a step-change in sales takes detailed planning and single-minded dedication.

SfS has helped several clients generate that step-change. The case study below gives one example, and the testimonials on the right provide extra inspiration.

Case study: Software vendor removes the bottleneck

Business Situation	Software developer first to market with a novel solution In spite of industry acclaim, sales were not growing as expected
Opportunity	To dominate the market before competitors gain a foothold
Challenges	To move from the first few early-adopter sales into full-scale selling Sharing the selling knowledge more widely around the sales team
Needs	Formalise the sales knowledge and process, so it can be replicated and scaled-up
Solution	The Marketing Workshop revealed the main factor holding them back: the CEO, who was also the founder, was the only person that could explain their business propositions Every sale needed the CEOs involvement, so he was a bottleneck to growth Sales Guide was used to capture and share the CEO's “magic” The process of reviewing and approving the Sales Guide allowed the CEO to “let go”
Result	The main bottleneck to sales was removed The company realised its potential, growing to the point where it was acquired by a major solutions vendor, yielding the founder a decent reward This was an extreme case, but we have seen many instances where it is not the founder but the solutions specialists or business development people that are the bottleneck to more sales. Making salespeople more self-sufficient through the Strategic Sales Program can remove this bottleneck