Lead With Velocity to Align Your Sales and Strategy

As a sales professional or a member of a sales team, here are some questions I want you to ask yourself:

• What do you do when new competition shows the potential to disrupt your sales cycle?

• What do you do when you find that you are not innovating as fast as others and are losing momentum?

• What do you do when you are successful, but worried about digital disruption from new technologies like generative AI?

• Finally, what do you do to ensure your revenue targets stay on track when faced with evolving market dynamics and unexpected competitive pressures?

I will ask once more: What do you do?

In a recent episode of “Opportunity Hour: Conversations with the Masters,”  I had the pleasure of speaking with Ron Karr, a sales and leadership expert who has worked as a consultant for countless organizations in six countries.

As bestselling author of The Velocity Mindset: How Leaders Eliminate Resistance, Gain Buy-In, and Achieve Better Results Faster, Ron teaches business leaders how to create more value while under price pressure in a very crowded space, and to maximize value while streamlining the sales cycle through effective customer relationship management.

At the end of the day, everyone is selling something, but the sales strategies and sales process we each use can significantly impact how sales go. Whether you are a C-suite executive or a member of your organization’s sales team, customer service, or marketing department, the ability to effectively sell your idea, product or service is absolutely essential — and always will be!

An effective sales strategy is crucial for driving team performance and achieving sales goals. And aligning your sales and marketing strategy can further optimize revenue growth and enhance team performance.

Align Your Sales Goals With the Concept of a Velocity Mindset and Sales Pipeline

Here is an analogy I find useful:

How do pilots plan a route from Newark to London?

One thing is for sure: They do not say, “We fly wherever the wind takes us.”

Pilots begin with the journey’s end in sight. They start at their final destination and work their way backwards, choosing two or three waypoints in between and factoring in all potential obstacles to decide the fastest and safest way to reach London.

This is velocity — moving with speed and direction.

Many leaders and whole organizations try to speed through to the next sale or breakthrough innovation, but mere speed is not enough to get you where you want to go. Speed will move you, but will it place you at the head of your industry? Will moving without any idea of where you are going increase your competitive advantage or ROI?

It will not.

The key is to have the right end goal in mind — or, in other words, the outcome you want to achieve. This is how to build a sales strategy that works. As Ron stated in our interview, “The thing we do that drags on our velocity is that we don’t have the right destiny in mind. Setting clear sales team goals is essential to ensure that every effort aligns with the desired outcome and fits within a structured sales process.”

Establishing specific revenue targets is crucial for maintaining focus and adapting to market changes. Furthermore, creating a sales strategy can further enhance your ability to achieve these targets.

Determine Destiny for Your Sales Team

Destiny is important to your strategic advantage because it dictates the actions you take, as well as the actions you forego to better serve your target customers. This is why collaboration with sales leaders and your sales team is essential for setting clear goals and making data-driven adjustments to tactics.

This ties into something vital that I teach all budding Anticipatory Leaders — aligning your Futureview®. Your Futureview® is not a goal or a plan, but the vivid mental picture you actually hold of your own future, as well as that of your organization.

Everyone has a Futureview®, whether we realize it or not, but it is becoming aware of our Futureview® that puts a tremendous tool in our strategic arsenal. It dictates the actions we take and the ones we decide against, allowing us to take control of our future and determine our own realities.

Having both a structured sales team and structured sales process is crucial for evaluating efficiency and adapting strategies over time. This improves outcomes and allows you to better manage customer relationships. Sales representatives play a key role in understanding customer needs and maintaining relationships to enhance value-based selling.

As an Anticipatory Leader, it is your responsibility to align the Futureview® of your organization, creating a united vision that everyone in the organization takes the actions necessary to reach. But before you can align your organization’s Futureview®, you need to realize what it is. Once you have a vivid mental picture of where your organization will be (your destination), you can properly chart your course (your journey).

Foster the Right Organizational Culture in Your Sales Team

Everyone is a salesperson in one way or another, both in our professional and personal lives. Whether you are giving a presentation to an executive or selling a product or service, we all are looking to sell something.

Fostering an organization-wide sales culture is imperative for all Anticipatory Leaders. Implementing inbound sales strategies can significantly enhance these efforts by focusing on interactions initiated by potential buyers and aligning sales processes with the buyer's journey.

An effective sales team culture is about more than just activity. It is not the number of calls you make or deals you close. A large number of clients does not necessarily mean they are the right clients. Dedicating too much time and effort to the wrong clients will not help you maintain velocity or fulfill your organizational Futureview®.

A unified sales team culture is about having the right conversations, and qualifying your customers during that first interaction as much as they are qualifying you.

Your right customer may be a legacy client for whom you free up stock space by foregoing other, less useful new clients, doubling their sales and increasing your ROI. Or it might be a new client with a lot of potential on whom you focus your energy instead of targeting the low-hanging fruit.

Managing Your Pipeline: Effective Sales Strategies

Identifying and targeting potential customers is crucial for effective demand generation strategies. But maintaining and optimizing a consistent sales pipeline is even more crucial, ensuring that your sales team can effectively manage leads and meet their sales goals.

In addition to maintaining and optimizing a sales pipeline, implementing an effective sales team strategy is key to driving consistent growth. A well-defined sales strategy should include:

• Clear value propositions

• Targeted outreach

• Personalized engagement to build trust and shorten sales cycles

Leveraging data analytics to understand customer behavior and predict future trends can further enhance decision-making and boost conversion rates as well. How are you currently aligning your sales strategy with your pipeline management to maximize results?

Utilizing effective sales tools, such as CRM, analytics, and sales enablement technology, can streamline operations, optimize workflows, and ultimately close high-value sales faster.

It is time to maximize your sales strategy! Start with a velocity mindset, move to unite your sales team's Futureview®, and be sure to optimize your pipeline to get a winning sales strategy. As they say, there are countless fish in the sea, but remember that some taste better than others. Regardless of your industry or department, it is your job to find the best-tasting fish and then use your newfound velocity mindset to reel them in!