When you build a new product or service you’ll have to decide what value you’re going to bring to your customer, what problem you’ll solve, and what that should be worth. As you bring that product to market, you will create value propositions that define your position across product planning, marketing messaging, and sales messaging. This simple framework helps to keep the product and messaging aligned, clear, and on track.

If you google “sales enablement” likely you’ll be bombarded with various CRM and sales process vendors, metric platforms, and consumption and training software. And all those things are great things if the strategy, content, and tools being used in via these platforms is right. In this blog, we outline key components you should consider prior to picking the right software and digital platforms for your company.

Many B2B sales leaders still don’t recognize B2B purchase decisions as emotional. Even if business leaders, say they believe there’s an emotional element in the decision-making process, little importance is actually placed on marketing and sales initiatives that strive to create an emotional connection between the prospect or customer and the company brand.

Want fast growth, higher win rates, and improved customer retention? The answer lies in tightly-aligned sales and marketing processes. Research shows it’s more important than ever that these two departments meld together – by aligning the two, organizations see an average of 32% annual revenue growth (Forrester), 38% higher win rates, and 36% greater customer retention (both stats from MarketingProfs).

The one thing many leaders fail to understand is that logical decision-making is anything but logical. That’s what makes determining and creating value so elusive, vague, and hard. Before we can explain how exactly value is derived, it’s important to understand the rather illogical decision-making process behind purchase motivation.

What Guides Our Decisions?

When looking to grow revenue, a common strategy is to increase your deal size and sell upstream. Unfortunately, without a major shift in selling methodology sales leaders find the initiative unsuccessful. Traditionally, if the average deal size is relatively small, sales reps generally are able to successfully sell the product based on features and benefits; however, when the average deal size significantly increases, prospective clients expect to hear more than that—they want to hear and receive value.

Many CEOs come to us looking for answers. When sales are stagnant or taking a dive—especially with older companies that have been around for a while—it usually can be traced to two root reasons. 

Some industry experts claim that “CRM is dead”, with 70% of senior sales executives believing their current CRM system needs to be overhauled. At SRi, we believe CRM is here to stay, but only if its used differently than in the past. 

With under 5 weeks until EOY, it’s safe to say you’re insanely busy. Scrambling to close deals, worried about making the target by New Year’s Eve, and in the heat of it all, you need to make a sales plan. As you prepare your roadmap for 2018, make sure to avoid the following five blunders.