Visit any sales conference and you’ll hear people comparing notes about what’s in their “tech stacks.”
At last count, there are nearly 2,000 single-point solutions on the market to manage some aspect of selling – CRM, automation, AI, deal analytics, you name it. But have you ever considered what’s not in your tech stack? Because for roughly 98% of all enterprise sales organizations, the answer is the same: Talent.
When I talk to CEOs and CROs about the future of their sales, probably 90% of their angst comes down to talent:
- “We don’t have the right people or enough of the right people”
- “The Great Resignation is killing me”
- “We can’t get enough applicant flow”
- “Our win rates are dropping”
- “I’m not sure my people have the right skills anymore”
Problems like these – not the incremental efficiencies of a bunch of new point solutions – are the defining issues of selling effectiveness today. Tech is great, but Talent is your foundation. So, why can’t we take all these powerful new methods and use them to get better at Talent?
Actually, we can. In fact, AuctusIQ already has.
At its core, a salesforce is simply a collection of human beings. Your number one issue is ensuring that your human beings are better than your competition. Our research today about how to hire, develop, and coach salespeople is order-of-magnitude better than just a few years ago. AuctusIQ combines that with robust data capture, analysis, and process in a single, end-to-end platform that makes you smarter about your two most important groups – salespeople, and sales managers.
Part I: Salespeople
Hiring and developing great salespeople is all about understanding what makes them tick and recognizing what they have or have not been taught. With AuctusIQ, I can understand the moment-in-time capabilities of every single one of my sellers at the individual, team, BU, and enterprise level. I know their natural attributes and their business acumen. I can benchmark their strengths against my peers and competitors, or against what is considered world-class.
When I can measure and monitor all of this, I know how to make them better. I now have the power to help them hit more quarters, but whether they’re hitting them or not, I can validate that they are bigger, faster, and stronger on day 91 than they were on day one.
Part II: The Sales Managers
No one is more important to the success of a selling organization than the sales manager, yet this is one of the least invested-in job families in the corporate world.
Most sales managers are not natural GMs. They get plugged into this role because they’re battle-tested and because they have unique gifts in interacting and persuading other people. This can be invaluable when developing individual salespeople, but you’ve got to teach them how to use it. The number one skill that most sales managers are missing – and it’s highly teachable – is how to give deep deal coaching.
AuctusIQ provides the knowledge and tools to give meaningful feedback in real-time. And when you apply great deal coaching to a well-chosen team of sellers, it’s amazing what happens:
- Rep growth and productivity accelerate dramatically with real-time deal coaching
- Cycle times shrink as your reps learn to find the next best move to make
- Margins increase because you’re not just getting the deal done, you’re getting it done at the target price point
- Your forecasting improves because you know how to clean up the funnel
- Sales operations flow smoothly
And one more thing: When you solve for talent first and combine the right sellers and leaders with a plan that you know is working, all those other tools in your tech stack will give you more return on invested capital than ever!
Want to hear Troy talk about putting talent in your tech stack? Listen to our corresponding podcast episode here.
Troy Kanter is the CEO and Co-Founder of AuctusIQ. Kanter has been transforming sales organizations and their revenue streams for more than 25 years. Prior to co-founding AuctusIQ, Kanter served as CEO of TwentyEighty, a $300M learning and performance management firm and the holding company of the world’s largest sales training organization. Before his role at TwentyEighty, Kanter was the President and COO of Kenexa, a software and services firm that he led from start-up through an IPO in 2005 to a $400M run rate in 2012, when it was acquired by IBM for $1.4B. At Kenexa, Kanter led the global salesforce, executed more than 20 mergers & acquisitions, guided the business through multiple rounds of funding, and expanded the company to more than 3000 employees operating in 20 countries.