Sales Strategy: What It Is and Why It Matters

Strategy creates a common understanding of what an organization wants to achieve and what it needs to do to meet its goals. It defines the long-term direction of the enterprise and articulates what the enterprise will do to compete and succeed in its chosen markets or, for the public sector, what the agency will do to achieve its mission. For sales specifically, the distraction that constant change creates poses two challenges for chief sales officers (CSOs) with regard to sales strategy:

1. Keeping the sales team focused on hitting goals

2. Responding faster to threats and opportunities with proper forecasting and scenario planning

Change is no doubt challenging, but sales leaders can use it to their advantage. With a strategy designed for flexibility, today’s change-heavy environment can present a number of opportunities for growth.

According to Gartner research, executives spend an average of 25% of their time on planning. However, 56% of those executives see their current planning process as a waste of time, and only 31% feel their strategies position them to hit long-term goals. There are common pitfalls to success:

1. Overlooked sales function maturity gaps (see the Capabilities tab)

2. Failure to develop clear and actionable goals 

3. Failure to effectively communicate the plan internally

Clear and actionable goals

Sales leaders must develop high-quality goals. Many times, however, effective goals are absent from strategies. This occurs when organizations fail to create clear outcome-oriented goals that are challenging but also realistic. Goals that are too broad, poorly defined or appear to be in conflict with the organization’s values are an all-too-common cause of strategic failure.

Ensure a goal-development process that incorporates external trends, an assessment of the function and broader organizational priorities. These three inputs may not always be actionable on their own, but they can yield high-quality goals aligned with both business realities and higher-level priorities.

Another critical component to a sales strategy are the KPIs that measure your progress toward your goals, budget resources, collaborate with other functions and ultimately drive change. When measured and communicated correctly, strategic KPIs provide actionable business insights and organizational intelligence. 

However, organizations are awash in data and can easily lose sight of the right questions to ask and the best ways to act on the answers. By simply “reporting the news” — providing descriptive data that quantifies past events — sales fails in its mandate to provide the actionable intelligence that the organization requires. This is amplified by the need to react quickly in a volatile economic landscape. According to Gartner research, 40% of CSOs identify accurate and actionable forecasting as a top 3 internal challenge.

Internal plan communication

According to Gartner research, 61% of executives feel their organization struggles to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and day-to-day implementation. This is because key stakeholders often struggle to understand and build a connection to strategies when they are not communicated effectively. In fact, employees are 77% more likely to be high-performers when their level of understanding of goals and their connection to work is higher than when their understanding is low.

An effective way to communicate a strategy is through a strategic plan — for example, a succinct, one-page document that communicates high-level themes and lists the most important goals, initiatives and urgency drivers. This method ensures everyone agrees on how to communicate the plan as concisely as possible and can also be shared with all stakeholders to bring them up-to-speed.

A sales strategic plan documents the choices and actions needed for the function to move from the current state to the desired end state and contribute effectively to the enterprise business model and goals.

Successful organizations are moving to a strategic model that spans across functions and silos, employing a hybrid approach that leverages virtual and digital interaction. To succeed, sales leaders must cultivate a buyer engagement experience that helps buyers feel confident in their purchase decisions. This requires orchestration across key players — such as marketing, customer service, customer success, product and even IT — through the effective use of technology.

End-to-end revenue growth requires three revisions to today’s sales strategic plans:

1. A buyer-centric operating model

2. Digital buying and hybrid selling

3. An adaptable sales force that can deliver value to today’s customers

Buyer-centric operating model

A buyer-centric operating model requires visibility, collaboration and coordination across all customer-facing functions. CSOs should start by improving collaboration with marketing in six areas: customer profiles, messaging, measurement, enablement, process design and customer data and systems. Create consistency in messaging and communication across customer engagement touchpoints so it’s less likely that sellers inadvertently create inconsistencies with what buyers independently find online.

Digital buying and hybrid selling

As the usability and customization of digital commerce platforms continue to improve, buyers will be more comfortable making large, complex, online purchases. By 2025, Gartner predicts 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. The trade-off between digital and human-led channels is a false one. Both channels are necessary and complementary. CSOs must create a sales strategic plan where sellers and digital channels work together to deepen customer learning.

CSOs should invest in a combination of dynamic personalization merged with new seller skills and behaviors that span traditional channels. This is necessary because the multichannel paths that buyers take are likely to include a mix of digital channels, human-led interactions and even hybrid experiences. By creating a system where sellers and digital channels work together to help customers learn, CSOs and their teams can create a customer experience that buyers value.

Sales strategies and sales strategic plans must be built on a realistic understanding of your team’s capabilities. A challenge for many sales leaders is gaining an objective view into the function’s capabilities to evaluate strengths and shortcomings to prioritize next year’s investments.

A thorough diagnostic exercise is often the most effective way to build an objective picture of organizational maturity. Collecting data from key sales leaders on the capabilities most critical to their ability to hit goals can focus planning discussions, accelerate the process and increase accuracy.

We recommend a diagnostic examination spanning the entire sales organization, including account management and growth, new customer acquisition, sales operations, sales enablement, sales strategy and design, and talent management. The findings from this type of comprehensive review will pay dividends, both in defining plan goals and in designing actions to take against these goals.