Sales
Keep your sales force focused on selling by streamlining your sales operations and ensuring you have the most effective tools available. With a blend of clear documentation for onboarding, scalable sales processes, software tools, and processes for iterative improvements, less time will be spent on administrative tasks making more time available to invest in developing meaningful relationships, exploring options, maximizing opportunities, closing sales, and increasing revenues.
Hire me to:
- Identify your target audiences
- Map your customer journey
- Develop sample sales scripts and FAQs
- Create sales presentations, documents, and media
- Centralize sales data
- Improve prospecting
- Qualify leads in your database
- Lead management (including automations and personalization)
- Lead engagement - call scripts (consultative), quote development (outlining value), CPQ configuration
- Sales forecasting
- Create customer equity and ongoing engagement - lifetime value, create evangelists and also exploring curiously and identifying account/customer growth opportunities
- Improve Sales reporting - activity, deal pipeline, market penetration, dashboards; organize analytics to inform business decisions
- Suggest and and manage the implementation of software solutions (CRM, CPQ, Docusign, etc.).
Challenge:
Decor Maine, a rapidly growing regional home and design publication, faced significant challenges in its sales operations. As the newly appointed head of sales, I inherited a library of spreadsheets. The spreadsheets siloed contact information, sales history, and more in various disconnected files. Further, there was no clear outline of products (to configure, price, quote) or a strategy for revenue growth.
Strategy:
Knowing that the administrative work required to continue managing sales in this way would not allow me the time needed for meaningful engagement to build the authentic, long-term relationships needed for the magazine’s long-term success, I dedicated 20% of my time weekly to improving sales operations.
My approach included the following key initiatives: 1. Centralizing Data: I consolidated all customer and lead data into a single, accessible system. This involved creating a comprehensive list of products with detailed descriptions and standardized pricing. 2. Implementing CRM Software: After assessing various CRM solutions, I recommended and spearheaded the implementation of HubSpot as a long-term solution for managing customer relationships and sales processes. 3. Developing a Full-Cycle Sales Strategy: I introduced a full-cycle sales strategy that encompassed lead generation, customer engagement, and post-sale support, all managed through HubSpot. 4. Streamlining Processes: By centralizing account data, formalizing contracting and billing procedures, and developing clear marketing plans, I significantly improved operational efficiency. 5. Enhancing Communication Transparency: I established transparent communication channels to ensure all team members were aligned and informed about ongoing projects and goals.
Results:
Within a year, I independently boosted overall year-to-year sales by 20% and enhanced our advertising sales operations by implementing a full-cycle sales strategy with Hubspot. Furthermore, by centralizing all account data, engaging sales targets, formalizing contracting, billing, and creative production processes, developing thoughtful marketing plans, outlining lead flow solutions, and introducing communication transparency, I improved my efficiency and eased the potential for the sales team to scale. At the conclusion of my tenure, the magazine had increased the sales team’s headcount by two and was able to utilize analytics organized on a Monday.com dashboard to inform ongoing business decisions. The successful transformation not only drove immediate revenue growth but also laid the foundation for sustainable long-term success.
This case study highlights the importance of strategic investment in sales operations to achieve impactful business outcomes.