Lesson: Sales Market Fit with Whitney Sales

Step #3 Sales Roadmap: Identifying the right sales model

Sales roadmap, I look at it as actually being the market-sales blend for your company. So it's looking at the sales methodology you're going to need to use to reach your market and the marketing methodology you're going to need to use to reach your market and what percentage of sales and marketing you're actually going to need for your business. This actually really comes into the piece around founder selling because they're going to understand how to reach their market and how difficult or easy it is and how receptive their market is to the message or product that they're delivering.

So if you look at selling, really I see three core types of selling. There's insight selling, which is a relatively new form of selling that CEB has formed around "The Challenger Sale" and this methodology called CHAMP, which is challenging your customer to think differently about their business. It's more of an outbound direct sale. So from a marketing standpoint, you're going to look at methodologies that are directed at direct communication with your customer. So thought leadership and speaking events and really getting your customer to think differently about their market overall.

Then there's the consultative solution sale. This plays into a market that typically already has some other companies in it. It's a bit more competitive. It's going to have a blend between inbound sales and outbound sales. So with that, you're going to be looking at pulling some leads in from the market. So there's going to be a bit more heavy marketing activity. So more outbound marketing, thought leadership, SEO, SEM pieces associated with that.

And then there's transactional selling, which is very heavy marketing and low-touch sales. So if we look at the marketing blend, they're going to be making up the much larger percentage than, say, an insight sale. A low-touch heavy marketing sale is going to be anyone who has a freemium, or a premium business. There's usually a blend within the organizations. So I can mention Pantheon, for example. Pantheon has a freemium model for their business. They also have a mid-market solution. They also have an enterprise solution.

When you look at the blend between those three, you can look at the freemium solution as a way to actually draw in leads, and then as customer behavior starts to indicate the size of an opportunity, you then engage a sales person in that opportunity. It can be a higher touch if you're going into enterprise and a custom solution and a custom sale versus a mid-market solution, you're going to be looking at a little bit simpler sale, thought leadership. It can include a mix of the three.

But certain businesses will be all enterprise. If you're dealing with a custom solution, an ERP solution, a high cost deal, you're going to be dealing with much larger customers, much longer sales cycle. Typically there's not going to be a freemium option for that because you're doings something custom for your customer.

But there are businesses that will include all three. If you look at the overall sales marketing funnel, there are monthly unique visitors on your website. So it's the people who are coming in and visiting your website. Then there's the form fill, which is going to be the marketing qualified leads.

From there, it's where the sales person actually is going to come into play. So they're the sales accepted leads. So they're saying, "Yeah, marketing says yes, it's our target market." But then I'm going to take a look and say, "You know what? This actually is a part of my market. This fits really well and they might be ready to buy."

Then from there, you're going to look at a sales qualified lead. So this is going to be the qualification process where the sales person is going to have a conversation directly with that customer and understand their needs. Then there's the demo. There might be a nurturing process, a negotiation, and a close.