The question often in meetings comes up around how we work with clients from a B2B sales consulting perspective and how are we different than other sales consultants out there. It is a great question and one I hope to answer below and hopefully it provides some insight into the different services available from a sales consulting perspective and how we differ.
 
Sales consulting can be broken up into two areas as I see it including Passive Sales Consulting & Active Sales Consulting.

 

Passive Sales Consulting

Sales Strategy Consulting

This is where a consultant who may or may not have a decent background in sales provides you with a sales strategy and action plan but does not do the work. In this scenario, the firm will sit down with you, understand what your goals are (short, medium, long-term), look at your sales resources from a personnel and digital asset standpoint, help you assess target markets and target contacts, work with you on messaging, perhaps set some activity goals and then will hand you off the PowerPoint deck and send you on your way. We don’t do this.
 
I have always found the challenge with this is that unless the consultant has experience that is relevant, then providing advice to a company on how to sell can be difficult. We have seen many cases over the years where the firm provides sales consulting assistance and they are marketers and haven’t actually done B2B sales or they are career long consultants with little or no outside sales experience. The other aspect of this is keeping accountable to the plan. Without someone driving to execute on the recommendations made, oftentimes nothing moves and little or no action is taken.
 

Sales Training

This is exactly what it says it is. Provides sales training advice on how to do any number of things – generate leads more effectively, leverage social media for sales, be a better presenter, build better sales decks, close more successfully etc…
This sort of sales consulting is great if you have a team of sales people and if the sales consultant has experience selling. We know a number of sales training consultants who are excellent and they can service almost any company in any vertical, why? Because they have years of practical experience to draw from. They have walked the walk. I have seen others who go into training before they have even ever sold or they come to the sales training space from another angle, business coaching, marketing etc…and I find this is tougher as the individual has less practical knowledge and it makes it harder for them to relate to the sales team. We don’t do this.
 

Active Consulting

Sales Training/Coaching

Differing from the sales training above, an active sales training consultant will continue to work with the team over a period of time to ensure the lessons are being applied, implemented and then tracked. This is a rarer form of sales training as most trainers deliver a course and then leave it for the sales team and sales managers to oversee its implementation and ultimate success. This type of sales training is more like sales coaching. We don’t’ do this.
 

Sales Management Consulting

A large number of firms already have a sales team in place and are lacking sales management expertise. Having a seasoned sales manager that can stay on top of daily and monthly activities and monthly and annual revenue targets is key to success. These individuals are often experts in the sales process and leverage tools such as a sales CRM to help support their work. We do this sort of work in a number of cases and in addition to the management will often provide assistance around value proposition refinement and target market identification.
 

Sales Strategy and Execution

Working with a company to understand where they are, how they want to get to where they want to be, their current resource base (people, financial etc…), what is working from a sales perspective and what isn’t and then taking all of that, massaging a value proposition, finalizing paths to market and a target account list, breaking out manageable territories for sales reps, structuring and effective compensation plan for in-house reps…these are all core items when building out a sales strategy. Once that is complete then, it is the execution of it that matters. So having a trusted partner in place to oversee the execution or even do it is important. It is only through the doing that we can see success, pivot direction, change tactics and ultimately provide constant feedback to evolve the initial sales strategy. Sales is not a static item so the process of doing and feeding back in is just as important as having a strategy in the first place. This is what we do.
 
We believe that to truly consult, the process can’t simply be at the beginning. It does need a starting point, a strategy, but that strategy should evolve based on input and feedback as the sales machine starts rolling. It is ever evolving and to be successful needs constant tweaking – whether it be verticals targeted, key messaging developed that was never considered in the initial planning and value proposition development process, sales support material needed etc…VA Partners was designed and built for this type of sales consulting. An active engagement that sees constant refinement based on execution.
 
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