Sequoia Capital Presentation Calls for Focus on Sales Productivity. Now What?

Sequoia Capital recently advised their portfolio companies on what to do in response to the meltdown in capital markets. Sequoia's presentation to their investee CEOs highlights that the months ahead aren't going to be like anything companies have recently seen. In response, on business development, they reportedly recommended a focus on sales productivity.

This poses a bit of a problem.

Long before the market melted, CEOs identified sales productivity as their top issue for 2008. So, now the biggest challenge for the year is also one of the keys to surviving the year. In such turbulent times, doing more of what's yielded sales productivity as a top business concern is unlikely to now suddently improve it.

In our view, new conditions require new approaches. Fresh conditions require fresh thinking. Pressures for more sales productivity require proof of how productivity is being affected by the things being tried day-to-day. Unless this happens, expect to see declines in sales productivity at the very time when improvements in it are most called for.

Parenthetically, one client called me last week to say that they'd seen a market turndown in the past five days that, if sustained in the coming weeks, will reduce their 12 month sales forecast by 60%.
They've begun testing new tactics. Real-time evidence of sales productivity is a competitive advantage, esp. in turbulent times.

For reference, Sequoia's presentation is available here:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

A Fish Finder for Sales Reps Who Must Fish for New Deals

For Reps who must 'fish' for new deals to make their quota, it's hard, if not impossible, to know which prospects are interested. The inflection in a prospect's voice can be misleading. In these instances, Reps often waste efforts calling prospects who aren't interested in, or ready for, a further conversation.

Imagine knowing, with no exceptions, which prospects are interested, what they're interested in, and the relative urgency of their interests. For B2B Sales Reps, it's the equivalent of knowing where the fish are, how big they are, and how hungry they are.

Amacus users know these things, and know them across all prospects and all stages of the sales process. Amacus-assisted Reps have their fishing lines in the water, as always. But, with Amacus, their fishing efforts are invested with pinpoint precision.

This fish finder for B2B Sales Reps is a difference-maker. It often causes new deals to close quickly, as it did in this example.

In Uncertain Times, Use Real-Time Data To Reduce The Uncertainty

While it's still early, the market rumblings of the past few weeks are starting to give rise to concerns in B2B sales and marketing circles about the uncertainties that lie ahead. According to a survey just released by LEAPJob, Sales Reps are beginning to defer their own major purchase plans.

Ironically, the latest issue of the HBR includes a cartoon that hints at the dark humor we can expect. As the presentor speaks to the sharp drop in results, a colleague chimes in: "By golly Jones, I like your optimism. I didn't know we had a 5th quarter!"

If the pace of change is likely to quicken, the best response in our view is to quicken the pace with which change can be detected. Sales productivity data that arrive on a week-to-week basis, with performance reviews month-to-month (or quarter to quarter) will leave companies badly exposed. Further, if the precision and speed of those data rely on the precision and frequency of Sales Rep input, there's much to fear in the imprecisions and lag times that are likely.

Our bias is to automatically capture new real-time data on sales productivity, delivered as a result of prospect behaviors (rather than Sales Reps' impressions or efforts). It's a shift away from focusing on how many contracts the sales team has produced, towards a focus on how many prospects have read contracts.

Such data deliver several benefits. First, any shifts in a company's sales trajectory are clear with no lag time (as in this example). Second, the data are comparable across the full sales team and across time. Observed trends are real trends (while the inflection in a prospect's voice can be misleading, their behaviors won't lie). Third, armed with the confidence that the trends they're seeing are real, sales teams can respond much faster to market conditions (as occured in this example).

Real-time sales productivity data won't make market conditions any more certain, but they will reduce the risk that downward trends will be unknown or ignored. In our experience, the faster a sales team knows about the actual impacts their efforts are having with prospects, the higher the odds are that they will find new ways of engaging their target markets well in advance of their competitors (who will still be blindly hoping things don't turn out as ugly as they feared).