Every CRO and sales leader wants consistent and predictable revenue growth.
But how many can, hand on heart, say they have it?
40% of CROs report that generating and converting a healthy pipeline, is their biggest challenge right now. Of course, there are a variety of external factors at play – economic uncertainty, inflation, supply chain disruption, increased competition, regulation, shifting customer behaviours; the list goes on. Each one individually is a stand-alone challenge, and in combination can cause extremely inconsistent revenue growth in 2024.
However, I would suggest the biggest reason for inconsistency, sales rep performance. Let me explain…
The role of sales in driving revenue growth
The most impactful way to boost revenue growth is sales.
Sales revenue is a vital measure of success for every organisation, regardless of size, product, service, or market. More than just a financial metric, it’s a key performance indicator of company health, growth potential, innovation, effective organisational decision-making, and investor/market confidence.
When sellers succeed, businesses succeed.
But the market is hard and unpredictable right now. As a result, performance across B2B sales teams is slipping – buyers are more risk-averse, generating a healthy pipeline is exponentially tougher, win rates are on the slide, and sales reps are falling behind on quotas. Indeed:
- 42% of companies are reporting a decrease in win rates
- 61% of sales reps are finding selling more challenging than ever
- 69% of sellers are falling short of their quota and having to work harder than ever to get deals over the line.
Top three reasons for inconsistent sales performance
- Doing more with less: Businesses are stuck in a very real paradox – doing more with less, whilst still aiming for revenue growth.
- Buying is harder: Buying is harder than ever, with on average 4 stakeholders involved in every purchase decision, and 61% of deals lost to buyer indecision. It’s a tougher landscape than ever before.
And here’s the big one…
- Sales rep underperformance: 83% of sales reps are therefore underperforming leaving organisations heavily reliant on a few top sellers. This is far from sustainable, and creates significant risk to consistent revenue growth
When sales performance suffers, everyone suffers, and businesses lose out on the revenue growth that would have resulted from consistent high performance.
So, what to do about it?
How to drive predictable sales-driven revenue growth?
I read a LinkedIn post recently that said: “consistent inputs lead to consistent outputs”.
To get consistent inputs, you must be very clear about what you want your team to do and how you want them to do it.
Flume has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of the challenges, trends, and opportunities defining predictable revenue growth. Most importantly, diving deep into the behaviours of sales teams bucking the trend to build and sustain outstanding performance.
We’ll be launching our new whitepaper very soon. In which you will learn:
- How high growth organisations are outperforming the competition. (Spoiler alert 🚨 they exhibit consistent experience-driven, high-performance sales behaviours.)
- A three-step framework for improving performance:
- Identify high-performing buyer-led behaviours
- Bottle the brilliance and codify best practice
- Nurture talent by optimising the impact of training
- What good sales training should look like today
Businesses have reached a sales inflection point. Those that rely on the ways of the past are on a course to repeat the same mistakes, and as a result will continue to experience unpredictable revenue growth.
By prioritising behaviour change and investing in developing and embedding the right sales behaviours, companies can unleash the full potential of their teams to drive predictable revenue growth.
You simply can’t afford not to.
Download the whitepaper “Driving Predictable Revenue Growth: A Roadmap for Sales Leaders” today.
