Strategy
Compass Growth Advisors can help you determine the status of your company’s sales performance by aligning the actions of your sales team with overall company strategy and go-to-market plans. We will help you answer these questions:
- Do you have the right people, processes and offerings?
- How well do you understand your differentiated value?
- Is your organization aligned to get the most out of your sales efforts?
Compass Growth Advisors has the experience to help determine the gap between your current capability and capacity and the staffing and processes that are required to meet your objectives. We can work with you to create options for closing the gap, as measured by KPIs like revenue and market share, including performance and productivity measurements. We determine the efficiency of the sales organization and offer recommendations for improvement—what should be kept and what needs to be replaced.
Our deliverable is a map which plots a course for change with milestones for closing any gaps. Our job is to assist you in facilitating that change, through coaching and recommendations— navigating obstacles and constraints on the voyage to your goals.
Philosophy
The first step is to understand your current strategy and how this relates to your go-to-market plan, customer perception, sales team members, sales processes, sales structure, accountability/performance measurement systems and results. This will help us determine the gap between current results and desired results; prioritizing the contributing factors and identifying what is limiting future performance.
We can help you determine how this gap intersects with strategy, potential customer value and your differentiated value. We evaluate your offerings so the sales team can successfully connect these with prospects.
In navigation, a compass is used for reference and provides bearings that are necessary to direct you from where you are to where you want to be. Let Compass Growth Advisors help get you there.
Solutions
1. Can I sell my product?
2. If I can sell it, can I make a profit?
3. If I can sell it and make a profit, can I generate enough cash flow to operate the company?
Jerry Voss – “Decoding the BS of Business”
Compass Growth Advisors can help you answer all of these questions and more.
- How do I determine how much of the sales pipeline is real? Or accurate?
- Do some companies really have accurate sales forecasts?
- How does sales leadership impact our sales team?
- How can we improve our sales forecast?
- How do we start winning deals that we lost but should have won?
- What does it take to get sales and marketing to work together effectively?
- How do we get the sales team to stop discounting to close business?
- Should we make our best rep the new sales manager?
- Are there really salespeople who close 90% of their quotes?
- Can our sales team become more effective?
- Do we have the right people on our sales team?
- How much more effective can our sales team become?
- Why do we keep losing good reps while the average and poor performers hang around forever?
- When does sales training work?
- How can you tell if a rep can work remotely or not?
- What are the most important attributes when hiring members of a sales team?
- How do you replace your top salespeople when they leave with new top salespeople?
- Are there ways to improve the hiring process for new reps and managers?
- Hiring seems so subjective, is there a way to bring some science and objectivity to the process?
- Is there a way to hire people who can deliver a fivefold or higher return within a reasonable time frame?
- How do you change selection criteria when hiring?
- How long should it take for a new rep or manager to become productive and effective?
- Do our systems and processes support a high-performance sales team?
- How do we stop wasting resources on opportunities which don’t happen or don’t result in orders?
- How do we stop unpaid consulting?
- What will it take to increase the effectiveness of our sales team?
- Why do our customers and prospects not understand the value we have?
- How do you get reps to sell value, instead of price?
- Can the sales cycle be shortened?
- Can we transfer the “best practices” of our best reps to the rest of the team?
- How do you sell against “giants” in the industry?
- What are the best ways to manage the cost of sales?
- Why is our cost of sales growing faster than our gross profit or margin?
Expertise
Compass Growth Advisors has over 100 years of combined sales and business experience between its three principals. We’ve worked with businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to mid-market and Fortune 50 companies in the U.S. and internationally. This experience spans many different industries, including high-tech/SaaS, telecom, software, technology, healthcare, medical device, manufacturing, mining, automotive, pharma, engineering, construction, oil and gas, distribution, transportation and logistics.
For the past 34 years, Terry Slattery has helped over 2,300 clients grow revenues and margins. He has developed value differentiation strategies for clients in more than 100 industries, re-engineered their sales processes, and trained and coached executives and sales organizations. Terry was a leading new business salesperson at IBM, where he first began using value differentiation. As a sales executive at other tech firms, he managed global relationships for the largest accounts, selling enterprise solutions for manufacturing, distribution and government. He is also the creator of Wimp Junction — a program that has taught thousands of salespeople how to recognize and eliminate nonproductive sales behavior, especially during complex sales.
Rick Wood has been working in sales and marketing since 1990. Selling in the industrial automation and manufacturing space, Rick moved to sales management and eventually company management. He has overhauled nonperforming sales teams, developed messaging and built-out new sales processes and distribution channels. As National Sales manager at NSK, Rick increased revenue by 50% while also increasing gross margin at key accounts.
Most recently, Rick was managing director of Rollon Corporation where he profitably increased sales fivefold by reengineering the sales team, moving out non-performers and adding strong sales reps and managers while transitioning into DV selling. He is an adherent of lean processes and developing repeatable sales systems.
Since retiring from 3M as a Vice President of Sales after being part of teams that grew the business from $550K to $675M, Dave Madsen has been working with numerous companies to improve sales processes, messaging and performance. At the Prime Resource Group, Dave was not only involved with developing assessment methodologies for evaluating sales process, people and performance, but was a key contact for onsite content delivery and client consultation. Dave’s business experience of 36 years has connected him with leadership teams in over 68 industries, ranging from technology start-ups to Fortune 50 companies in technology, SaaS, manufacturing, healthcare, engineering and construction. Dave’s key areas of specialization include determining value identification and clarification, and then working with sales, sales management, sales leadership and business development to provide cost-effective predictable revenue results.
Frank Reid is Vice President, Go to Market and a Partner at Zonos, the top cross-border eCommerce technology solution for landed cost calculations and the international customer experience. He has focused on scalable growth, market messaging, branding and helping set a strategic direction in the organization. Before moving to Zonos in 2011, Frank worked at 3M in their Health Information Systems division as an Executive Sales Representative, Product Sales Specialist and Product Marketing Manager, and was part of a great team at 3M HIS that saw the division reach a goal of market dominance. He is also an investor and has consulted multiple businesses in the property management industry.
