You are building a company, things are going well, and you need continued growth, continued excitement in your market and prove your contemporary business model. Your biggest worry is how to scale your operation. Direct sales are risky and expensive, geographic expansion requires localization and product investment and partnerships take time to nurture and pay off.
With all of these challenges how do we build an effective sales operation to take us to the next level? This is not an uncommon problem. All technology companies face it some point during their evolution. Whether it is picking the right sales reps, serving the right markets, or selecting the right partners, you need to stay focused on your core competence and plan your opportunities. Stay away from the common pitfalls and get help from people who have successfully done it before.
The first question to ask your team; is our offering scalable? Most companies think of stability in terms of product performance and quality, though important for growth this is assumed. Your offering is scalable when messages are simple and your value proposition is easily understood. Your offering should have a straight forward implementation and should quickly integrate with larger solutions. When you have achieved this, then your offering is repeatable. When repeatable it becomes easy to train new reps, expand to new geographies and partner with companies that will integrate your product into their solutions.
It starts with messaging. Are your messages simple? Can you articulate your value proposition in a minute? Is it repeatable in targeted vertical markets? Do you have proof statements to back up your claims? It is very important to get his messaging crisp. When you go to market with a direct sales model, your good sales reps can overcome messaging problems at the point of sale, but these models don’t scale. Remember that direct sales reps sell your product many times, the customer buys only once.
If you have a configurable product that suits many purposes for many people, you will need to package and price solutions to show tangible benefits to end users. Once installed, expansion opportunities will emerge through good account management. Good messaging is the foundation of effective outbound PR. Outbound PR will gain influencer mindshare, company and product awareness and most importantly attract new selling partners. Good crisp messaging makes your offering scalable shortening direct sales cycles and jump starting the partnering process.
The scaling of your operation requires collaboration with the whole operations team. It involves listening to what is happening in sales situations, tracking your competition then projecting your core competence. This will help you choose your vertical markets, drive product development and align with solution partners. This sounds straight forward, but there is many pitfalls along the way. Staying focused requires a plan that can be executed by the entire operations team. The best operations are plan driven and process managed, allowing you to constantly measure and manage progress, make adjustments and learn from your actions.
