During every first sales discovery conversation, CEO’s typically try to establish the conversation’s path based on whether their company is analog or digital.
Digital companies are fast moving, on the cutting edge in their thinking and actions, and their CEO’s are active on LinkedIn and Twitter. They are aware that selling has changed dramatically and already have inside sales teams, playbooks, demo decks and online tools beyond CRM. In true digital fashion, they live by their KPI’s which count the elements of their work flow.
Analog companies are old school. Analog salespeople still pound the phones to find opportunities and visit their prospects to close sales. Their CEO’s may have a LinkedIn account, but it probably isn’t used much, they don’t tweet, and are less up to date on the dramatic changes that selling tactics has undergone in the last 5 years because “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. In true analog fashion, measure work product, not flow.
The difference between workflow in a digital company versus work product in the analog company is dramatic. However, at their core, they have a lot more in common than they may think and they both still have work to do.
While digital companies usually believe that they have it all figured out because they are using the latest technology and hiring a younger workforce, they still fall prey to a broken sales machine when they’re not generating enough revenue due to misguided efforts and an unrealized, or misaligned salesforce. Similarly, the tried and true methods of Analog companies may not be generating the same results today as salespeople struggle to connect with new prospects, are losing important accounts, and veteran salespeople find themselves in denial.
The commonality between them is that both sales organizations are susceptible shortfalls in their revenue.
In the end, it simply does not matter whether the technological foundation of a company is analog or digital because the true driving force of any sales organization is its people. The key to modernising your sales organization is to modernise your salesforce and in order to do that, you need to hire the right sales people for the role.
Proper recruiting is one of the most essential and foundational things to get right. A simple change to your selection criteria and accurate and predictive sales tools will drive up your rate of success and consistency very quickly!
Organizations need to be equipped with proper HR machinery which includes modern candidate assessment tools specifically designed to hire the new breed of sales hunters that organization needs in this new dispensation to consistently deliver exceptional results. If you are a CEO or Sales VP one of your core focus during this period should be optimizing your sales force, which starts with improving the hiring process.
