CEO-LED SALES

The new model to transform your business

Andrew Phillips

• Publisher: Social Star
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780645038620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

CEO-Led Sales outlines The Right Model to revolutionise your sales process and dramatically improve your confidence in the predictability of your sales numbers. This has to start from the top with you, the CEO.

As the CEO of a sales organisation, how many times have you said to yourself:

? thank god our customers are buying because we're not selling;

? we had ten-times pipeline coverage, but we still missed our number?

Or... heard from your sales leads the following:

? the person who was going to sign off on our deal has gone on leave;

? this is a strategic deal - we must discount to win;

? they decided to do nothing?

If these lines sound familiar, then your sales team is stuck in the past. They are struggling to keep pace

with the market and will continue to stumble into the future. That's not to say you won't make your

numbers on occasion, but you can be guaranteed your company won't be the clear leader in its market.

This creates distrust with your sales team and that uneasy feeling of not being sure you will meet your

targets.

Is there a better way?

After twenty years as a senior IT sales leader addressing this problem and demonstrating measurable

success across multiple organisations, Andrew Phillips knows there is.

CEO-Led Sales outlines The Right Model to revolutionise your sales process and dramatically improve

your confidence in the predictability of your sales numbers. This has to start from the top with you, the

CEO.

The process is a multi-year investment to transform your sales organisation. It's challenging, but the

results are consistent and the revenue reliable. Andrew Phillips invites you to take the next step and

discover the benefits of CEO-Led Sales.

'Andrew has the best sales brain I've ever seen in the business. His approach to being a student of your

client is truly unique.' - Lysandra Schmutter, Vice President, Federal Government at Capgemini Australia

'Andrew is all about results. Using his natural forensic ability, he uncovers and develops opportunities across his team.' - John Preller, Head of Public Sector, Qualtrics (ANZ)

'If a sales relationship characterised by integrity, intelligence, empathy and respect is something you aspire to, you should listen to Andrew. He knows what he's talking about.' - Michael Vanderheide, ex CEO of Cenitex

'Andrew's approach to sales strategy is refreshing. He has the vision of the outcomes and the drivers for success through all stages of a deal, from the approach to pursue, respond, and ultimately into negotiations through to closing.' - Greg Thomas, Senior Solutions Executive, Unisys

PART C:

THE SOLUTION

7. The Right Model

The Right Model is a model I have developed over time to support my learnings throughout my career. It is an organisational culture underpinned by a process. It’s a culture of inquisitiveness, of urgency, of gaining and sharing knowledge, of engagement, of teamwork. I like to describe it as a culture that brings people together to form a collective ‘battering ram’.

A battering ram will smash into a wall two times and, on the third time, it will likely break through that wall. By contrast, one sledgehammer might smash against a wall 20 times and one swing might get through, but most swings barely make a dint. The wall in this analogy is The Right Deal with The Right Client. The battering ram is The Right Team smashing through to win it. The sledgehammer is the approach of most organisations today: sending one salesperson in at a time to win the deal.

The Right Model contains the:

• Right Clients

• Right Team

• Right Deals.

There are two plans that help to deliver each of these three things.

For The Right Clients there is the:

• CEO Sales Plan

• Attainment Plan.

For The Right Team there is the:

• Team Plan

• Remuneration Plan.

For The Right Deals there is the:

• Pursuit Plan

• Power Plan.

I will now go through each of these elements, in the above order, with the aim of changing the way you think about sales.

8. The Right Clients

The Right Clients enable your organisation to be successful because they are on the right or similar path to your organisation, have the right or a similar culture, and are growing at the right level. Quite simply, The Right Clients make it easier for you to be successful because they are headed in a similar direction to your organisation.

They also enable your organisation to evolve into those areas of the market that you, as the CEO, have identified will ensure future success for your organisation. The Right Clients aren’t determined by the revenue they are currently delivering or will likely deliver; this determination is based solely on the compatibility of the journeys that the client and vendor are on. The more compatible the journeys, the higher the chances are for mutual success.

So how do we identify The Right Clients?

Through The CEO Sales Plan and The Attainment Plan.

The CEO Sales Plan

The Right Model begins with The CEO Sales Plan. The CEO Sales Plan is a strategic sales plan that the Sales Coach and the Client Experts implement into the future. (I go into more detail on Sales Coaches and Client Experts in The Team Plan.)

The CEO Sales Plan brings together the vision, the mission and the corporate plan of the organisation, alongside the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace and the solutions, services and technology that the CEO wants to pursue over a multi-year period. It also describes the attributes of the clients that the CEO has decided they want to pursue. The board delivers the strategic goals, but it is the CEO who steers the ship towards those goals. The CEO Sales Plan is the map.

I say ‘multi-year’ because the time period will vary according to the average contract term in your marketplace. For example, if the average contract term for those large deals that will fundamentally change your business is three to four years, then the CEO Sales Plan should cover that period. If the contract term is longer, for example, if your organisation builds major infrastructure projects like airports, then your CEO Sales Plan will need to cover a much longer period. It is designed to begin planning today to win transformational deals that come back to market in the future, or to be a disruptive force to bring those deals to market.

The CEO Sales Plan includes:

The ‘Why’ of the Organisation: This refers to Simon Sinek and his book Start with Why and describes the fundamental reason the organisation exists.

A Rallying Cause from the CEO: A statement that clearly articulates the direction in which the organisation is headed.

Core Beliefs: The rallying cause from the CEO, broken down into various beliefs that support that cause.

An Assessment of the Previous Year: Learning through a critical analysis of the past. This includes a look at things like the major wins in the past year and how they were affected by staff, the vendor and the client community. Questions will be asked:

• What do I wish I knew? For example, which major deal do I, as the CEO, wish I knew we were going to lose?

• What would I have done if? For example, what would I, as the CEO, have done earlier in the year if I knew we were going to lose that major deal later in the year?

• What worked last year?

• What didn’t work last year?

An Assessment of Worthy Competitors: All competitors exist in an ecosystem. Worthy competitors are those that can leapfrog another organisation to win a deal. When this happens, the organisation that loses the deal learns from it. Ultimately, worthy competitors need to be embraced because they help an organisation to learn and grow. They add strength to the market and enhance client outcomes.

Solutions to Pursue into the Future: A list of solutions that the organisation will take to market now and into the future. An explanation of why these solutions are good for the organisation and what market forces are at play to ensure these solutions will be valued by clients. A description of the types of deals that would typically lead to one of these solutions being adopted by a client, and the types of competitors in that area of the market. These solutions must be drawn out into the future, looking at the readiness of the organisation to deliver them and how they will mature over time. It also includes a list of the key partners that will help deliver the solutions. Each solution is considered in detail with many questions that need to be answered. For example:

• What are the attributes of the target prospects?

• Which existing clients would be a prime target?

• Why is this good for our organisation?

• What market forces are in play that support our offering?

• Where are the prime reference sites?

• Who are the IP owners in our organisation that own this expertise?

• What sets us aside from our worthy competitors?

• What is the target year to be ready for delivery?

• Who are our key partners for this solution?

When the solutions are identified and drawn out over time, this will enable the Sales Coach and the Client Experts to translate these solutions into specific actions over a three- to five-year period. Conversely, this will also indicate those solutions that the organisation may want to exit in the future. An organisation only has a finite set of resources, so any pursuit of new solutions will inevitably lead to exiting others.

What Success Looks Like: A clear outline of success factors for the Sales Coach and the Client Experts, covering things like partnering strategies, Bedrock Deals, adhering to the Power Play and so on. This clearly guides the Sales Coach and the Client Experts towards long-term success.

The CEO Sales Plan is created by the CEO. This cannot be delegated, but assistance can be brought in. I say ‘brought in’ because I firmly believe assistance would need to come from outside the organisation to deliver the objectivity and independence required to help the CEO fully articulate all aspects of the plan. The fact that the CEO independently creates and owns this document is what makes The CEO Sales Plan completely different from any other plan that organisations put in place today. Of course, the CEO will turn to the key IP owners for input in creating the plan, but ultimately it’s the CEO who owns The CEO Sales Plan.

Once created, The CEO Sales Plan must be revisited regularly and updated whenever there is major upheaval in the marketplace. The CEO Sales Plan is not another document to tick off each calendar year. It doesn’t have a starting point, nor an end point. I’m a firm believer that business is a continuum: that once begun, it continues forever. Financial years and calendar years come and go but business never stops.

One mistake we often make today is to link our business planning to annual financial planning. The CEO Sales Plan will help disengage business from financial planning. Put simply, financial years work in cycles, opportunities with clients do not.

An example of a major upheaval in the marketplace that would require The CEO Sales Plan to be revisited would be the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020/21. Over the eons, there have always been rises and falls in the marketplace. In this case, I’d suggest going back to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 to look at what your clients did back then. More than likely, they will behave in the same way in 2020/21.

You might think about how, in the short term, you could transform your organisation based upon that. Alongside this, The CEO Sales Plan might contain a number of solutions that your organisation is going to transform into over the next four years. I’d suggest that, even with a major disruption like the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term strategy wouldn’t change. Another major upheaval might come internally. You may discover that one of the solutions or client segments you’ve chosen simply isn’t working out, that you’re not winning the deals like you thought you would. This would require The CEO Sales Plan to be revisited.

Ultimately, The CEO Sales Plan is a pragmatic view of all of the strategy documents that line organisations today. It distills the vision of the organisation into one actionable plan that a CEO can deliver to ensure that the organisation is headed in the right direction. It outlines the strengths, the weaknesses, the targets and the solutions for the organisation. Put simply it describes: what we’re going to sell, the type of clients we are going to sell it to, and when we are going to sell it. It is a guide to success for all organisations.

The CEO Sales Plan identifies the attributes of The Right Clients. The Attainment Plan makes specific who those clients are.

The Attainment Plan

The Attainment Plan converts The CEO Sales Plan into an actionable working-territory plan for each Client Expert. It contains all the clients and all the deals that need to be pursued over the same multi-year period that The CEO Sales Plan covers. It contains a mixture of Stepping Stone Deals and at least one Bedrock Deal per client. Put simply, The Attainment Plan is the strategy document for each Client Expert outlining how they will be successful within their territory, with both existing and prospective clients that have the attributes contained in The CEO Sales Plan.

For example, the CEO Sales Plan might outline that the organisation will be investing in RPA (Robotic Process Automation). This investment will mature in two years’ time and the attributes of clients needing this solution have been identified to have multi-state offices, over 200 staff, and are in the engineering, mining, retail or entertainment industries. The Attainment Plan will identify which current clients on the Client Expert’s list have those attributes and which prospective clients need to be added to the list.

It will look at such things as which clients that have those attributes did our worthy competitors sign up three years ago on a five-year deal, which therefore will have a contract coming up in two years’ time? In this example it gives the Client Expert two years to create the need in these clients for RPA. For some Bedrock Deals that timeline might be up to five years out. Over this time, some deals will come and go, that’s just reality, but The Attainment Plan and The CEO Sales Plan will ensure the deals that are left are real, and identify the deals to replace those deals that are lost.

I’ve touched on the elements of a Bedrock Deal before, but I would like to reiterate that these are the deals that fundamentally change you and your target client. These are the largest (within the top 10%) and most profitable deals in the pipeline that hit straight into your sweet spot. They fully align with the direction the CEO has described the organisation will move in — in The CEO Sales Plan.

As I’ve said, The Attainment Plan ensures that each Client Expert is working on at least one Bedrock Deal with each of their clients because there’s no point pursuing a cl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part A: THE ENVIRONMENT
• Part B: THE ORGANISATION
• Part C: THE SOLUTION
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author