Founders and sales leaders of B2B startups and SMEs are always stretched for bandwidth. There are a plethora of ever demanding urgent problems that need their attention across all aspects of sales engine. But only few areas has the leverage to create non linear outcomes in terms of revenue attainment or creating market traction. In this blog, we look at the B2B sales from a founder's lens to help clarify and prioritize attention and effort.

I love the 80/20 rule. It makes life simple. And simple is tractable. Another aspect of the 80/20 rule is that it helps identify the dimensions of leverage. And I love leverage. (Don't we all?). Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world." Who wouldn't want such levers to crush all sales targets?

So I thought it would be a fun thought experiment to apply the 80/20 rule to B2B Sales. I came up with the focus question "What are the few problems in B2B sales that offer the highest leverage?”. Then I just prepared a mental long list of all the problems related to sales and selling that I have experienced firsthand and seen from close quarters, thanks to my clients.

Problems in B2B Sales and Selling

The list grew pretty quickly, and therefore I took the help of pen and paper. Ready? Here we go:
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How to set a revenue target?
How to plan for sales?
How to allocate quota across territories?
How to generate leads?
How to generate qualified leads?
How to have great first meetings?
How to qualify a sales opportunity?
How to progress and shape an opportunity?
How to do an effective demo (or first meeting)?
How to write a good proposal?
How to create a sales deck?
How to hire good salespeople?
How to hire great salespeople?
How to motivate salespeople?
How to retain salespeople?
How to achieve sales targets?
How to consistently achieve sales targets?
How to improve the sales forecast accuracy?
How to improve price realizations?
How to close more sales?

This is a simplified list and focused on the functional aspects of sales. If we consider the sales and marketing technology, then we will have a much longer list.

The 4Ps of B2B sales help structure the problems

This list, along with other problems that didn’t make it here, can be summarized or abstracted into three or four large themes of Planning, Process, Projects, and Practices. If anything, these four could be the New 4 Ps of Sales. Let’s look at these, one by one.

Planning

This is about deriving targets from overall goals, planning to attain the revenue, planning for resources - both sales team, tools, and ecosystem. Good planning will clearly result in a realistic game plan to attain the target revenue across products and markets.

Process

This is the method or approach we will use to achieve the targets. A good process starts from philosophy (high abstraction) to methodology (low abstraction), to Operating Procedures (no abstraction 100% crystal clear)

Projects

This includes things that need to be set up or built usually once or just a few times in a year. For example, setting up the CRM, building sales collaterals, setting up the compensation plan, conducting sales training, etc. are all projects.

Practices

This ties to the ‘behavior’ on the ground. This is what we do daily. This includes aspects such as calling 20 prospects every day, sending out 10 LinkedIn connection requests every day, researching 10 new prospects every day, returning all prospect calls before closing the day, etc. Practices are what we do every day. And what we do every day is much more powerful than all the other aspects.

Practices Create Execution Leverage

So let’s come to our focus question again. "What are the few problems in B2B sales that offer the highest leverage?”. With the assumption of ceteris paribus, I strongly believe that practices offer the highest leverage relative to the other three. Practices translate plan to reality via executing the process. So for a Sales Leader or Sales Manager, someone responsible for marching the troops, practices are paramount. This creates forward movement in the direction of strategy or plan. The last line is crucial to remember when you consider the next point.

Planning Creates Strategic Leverage

If we remove the assumption of ceteris paribus, Planning offers the highest leverage. Planning correlates with the trajectory. The question of ‘how far will the ball go?’ depends not on how hard one can hit the ball, but which sport are you playing. A baseball will never compete with a golf ball, in terms of the distance range. It’s absurd to compare. Similarly, a strategic choice of targeting a different market, adopting a different sales process, etc. can create very different horizons. The strongest baseball player with the best technology can never beat even an average golf player. Do you get the idea? So if you’re the founder or head of growth strategy, your role is to focus more on planning to identify and build ways of creating a potentially unfair advantage.

Advice for B2B Startup Founders

The ideal combination for hyper-growth is Superb Planning X Superb Practices to maximize the results. This framework gives pointers to differentiate on which aspect of the B2B sales engine you are working on and how to go about it. A clear understanding of these aspects is also helpful in hiring the right kind of people best aligned to the growth stage of a company. For founders, being aware of these aspects can help you hire your vulnerabilities and delegate or outsource more effectively.