This is how servant leadership works: you act in the best interests of the people you lead and help them succeed. Your success becomes your success, and you continually increase the success of your team.
This article focuses on reducing barriers to success for B2B sales teams. Because it’s not realistic to exhaustively identify every possible barrier for every company, we’ll focus on some barriers that are likely to exist for every team. We’ll look at what these barriers are, why they’re particularly problematic, and what can be done about them.
Barrier 1: Lack of Specialization
Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler discuss the need for specialization in their book, Predictable Revenue. If you are interested in the general idea of outbound selling, her book is a very good place to start. However, in this article, we will focus on the business benefits of specializing the role of the sales pipeline.
Sales was and still is the domain of unicorn “rainmakers”: gregarious people who “can close at any time” and can do all the work of attracting, negotiating, and closing the client themselves. Such rainmakers will always exist, but they are rare, which makes it difficult to scale your business based on rainmakers.
Modern sales leaders recognize that sales, like most other careers, also benefits from specialization. Areas of expertise can be assigned to different phases of the sales pipeline, which are described below.
Market research activities focus on research activities to determine the ideal customer profile (ICP). These activities are often performed by personnel with marketing expertise. A central characteristic for successful market research is a curious and analytical employee.
Lead generation activities focus on finding leads that fit the ICP. These activities are often performed by personnel with marketing expertise. The core characteristics of successful lead generation are people who are good conversationalists and inquisitive.
Customer qualification activities focus on qualifying the customer and determining if the customer is a good fit and where they are in the buying cycle. These activities are often performed by someone who functions as a sales development representative (SDR). The core characteristics of successful customer qualification are people who are patient and process-oriented.
Customer closing activities focus on opportunity creation, negotiation, and getting the customer to say “yes.” These activities are often performed by someone who specializes in account management. Core characteristics of a successful customer deal include being able to negotiate and being aggressive enough to push for a “yes.”
Personally, I’m biased (I’m a “closer”). I love the commitment that comes with helping a customer find a solution, the context of the negotiation, and the thrill of saying “yes.” But these are exactly the characteristics that make me a pretty bad SDR. Why? I’m not very patient and I don’t like processes like: research, it seems like there’s no end to it, so I’m not a good customer either. Similarly, the researchers and SDR professionals I have had the opportunity to work with don’t like degrees. The best researchers I’ve worked with have an insatiable desire to find the needle in the haystack, but they avoid pressuring clients to say “yes.” Great SDRs pride themselves on their ability to nurture leads. This is especially important in B2B, because B2B buyers can’t really close the deal until they decide to buy. And great SDRs understand this.
Specialization makes intrinsic motivation work. For me, I’m in a “hot state” when I close a deal with a client. But if I have to qualify or research clients myself, that’s a pain. Sure, I can do that. But am I at my best? No. The same goes for SDRs and researchers. Scalable sales leaders understand the importance of placing team members in the roles they most want based on their interests and skills because this unlocks their intrinsic motivation to succeed. Individual success leads to team success and increased sales.
Barrier 2: Having Too Many “Customers” in the Pipeline
This barrier comes up all too often. What’s wrong with having “too” customers in the pipeline? The bottom line is: clearly define what a customer is. In B2B sales, a business only becomes a customer once they say “yes” and start paying. Before that point…it’s a lead or prospect, and spending resources on them doesn’t bring in revenue.
So worrying about how full the pipeline is, who the sales team is talking to, sending emails, doing marketing activities, etc. is a classic vanity metric. It’s so, so easy to convince yourself that “most of these are going to become paying customers eventually. We have to keep going.”
Instead of succumbing to vanity metrics, scalable sales leaders put their energy into managing the sales process by managing the pipeline. Here’s a related article that explains how and why to do this right.
