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Sales has long been the harbinger for business and particularly software innovations - there’s no better example than Salesforce, which went onto pioneer a whole new industry.
However, in recent years the sales process seems to have hit somewhat of a stagnation point when it comes to innovation or evolution - sure, we started off with cold calling from a boiler room and now moved to ‘revenue intelligence’ software that can give accurate feedback on voice inflection in your demo calls; but at the same time the challenges that haunted sales teams 5-10 years ago continue to do so:
Here are some of the biggest challenges faced by modern sales teams:
Whether it is giving demos or closing deals, most of your time as a salesperson is spent on sitting in the CRM and taking stock of the sales pipeline; yet, there is never a wholesome clarity on how your sales pipeline looks or what you have in store 2 weeks from today.
A sales pipeline without visibility is like driving a car without a fuel indicator - you are operating on uncertain territory that could totally throw you off track.
Revenue forecasting continues to be one of the biggest challenges for sales teams, despite the numerous tools at the disposal - in fact, a major source of insights and accurate forecasting is the CRM data, which is mostly viewed as a pointless task that takes away valuable selling time.
This lack of historical data or sometimes missing data means it is extremely difficult to build models that would give future sale projections.
Building genuine customer relationships post-sale has always been tricky for sales teams as it is always lower in the list of priorities - and oftentimes, teams drop the ball, spelling doom for customer relationships even before they begin.
Given the subscription business model and the impending upsell opportunities, it is no longer just enough to talk users into buying the product but facilitate a smooth transition and ensure continuous success.
Apart from these, there are the typical challenges of onboarding new reps, ensuring data hygiene within the CRM etc.
If you are wondering what a GTM OS is, and why you should consider bringing your sales team as part of the function, read on:
A GTM Operating System™ is a data-driven approach to align the goals and efforts of the Growth teams (Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success) in your company.
It helps you streamline internal processes, facilitates smooth hand-offs, and ensures that the customer-facing functions in your organization are on the same page at all times.
A well-oiled GTM Operating System acts as the single source of truth across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success setting up a Growth Flywheel at your company.
Under a GTM Operating System, the Sales team takes a completely data-driven approach to its KPIs and objectives - this is coupled with increased collaboration with your marketing and customer success teams on a day-to-day basis.
Understanding the buyer’s journey
One of the biggest challenges for business leaders is aligning the marketing and sales teams who are often at loggerheads.
With a GTM OS, this is taken care of as both the teams are set up to work closely with each other bringing much-needed clarity at both ends of the sales funnel.
For instance, the sales team will get more context on the new opportunities coming in which in turn helps sharpen their approach to demos Likewise, the marketing team will have more visibility into the bottom half of the sales funnel which helps improve the product messaging and marketing collaterals.
Smoother hand-offs
For the GTM functions, Sales teams are the bridge between marketing and customer success teams and heavily involved in the hand-off process.
A GTM OS allows sales teams to communicate efficiently by creating a closed-loop feedback system between the three teams.
For example, the marketing team can give insights on which leads have the best chance of converting so the sales reps can prioritize them for their outreach. Similarly, they can facilitate a good rapport between the user and the customer success teams right from the beginning.
Data-driven pipeline acceleration
One of the biggest advantages to having a GTM Operating System in place is that sales teams can unlock new business insights thanks to an end-to-end integrated tech stack.
This means access to data points and metrics that couldn’t be obtained easily in siloed data systems.
But with the entire tech stack connected in a single system, every metric is just a click away.
For example, instead of looking back at a month’s performance and realize that the sales quota was not met, the sales team will be able to proactively close down any gaps and shortcomings to ensure you hit your goals.
As Growth teams double down on measures that will help achieve operational efficiency and end-to-end transparency, the GTM OS™ Framework is the first and most important step for the sales team to head in the direction of data-driven decision making.
At Dataflo, we are building a dedicated GTM Operating System™ tailor-made for SMBs - sign up for early access.
