Question 01
How much are we going to sell, and by when?
Question 02
How are we going to sell more?
If you can't answer both questions with confidence you're guessing instead of knowing where to invest to stabilize and grow sales. You're making plans based on estimates instead of accurate data and reacting to sales problems instead of precisely identifying and fixing them.
Five inputs determine sales performance.
One person owns execution and the sales number. They provide focus, coaching and accountability.
The Sales Leader
01
Forecast closed deals and cash within 10%. Clear stage criteria and deal advancement run by the Sales Leader and the Sales Team.
An accurate pipeline & forecast
02
Sales Stages and Deal Odds based on what your buyer says and does, not how your Sales Team and Sales Leaders feel about the deal.
Sales Stages based on what the buyer does, not on how your Sales Reps feel
03
Reps who make the buyers problems and business solutions clear before proposing technical solutions. Talking with Champions and people who create budget, not the people who are easy to reach and talk to.
The right people selling to the right people
04
Salespeople should be sourcing their own leads but the more time they spend advancing and closing deals, the more deals they win and the more cash they generate.
Enough leads to make quota
05
Score these five inputs as red, yellow or green to identify the key constraint and opportunities to grow sales.
"Deal odds are based on feelings. Feelings become deal stages, deal stages become a pipeline, the pipeline becomes a forecast, and the forecast becomes a committed number.
The forecast becomes a number that is built, at its foundation, on how a handful of people felt about their deals."
I'm Steve Johnson. In my career I've bootstrapped my own IT solutions company to $7M, bootstrapped a B2B SaaS sales team from $750k to $5M ARR in 36 months, and spent the last eight years helping 30+ founders and CEOs from start-up to $85M do the same.
​
If you would like to learn the fundamentals that I applied to grow sales, you can:​​