September 2017

VOICE OF THE
SALES FORCE SURVEY
What Sales Professionals and Managers
Say They Need to Succeed in 2018
 INTRODUCTION
WHAT B2B SALES PROFESSIONALS AND MANAGERS SAY
THEY NEED TO SUCCEED IN 2018
It is no secret that sales leaders and CEOs want to maximize productivity and performance for their sales teams.
However, many leaders struggle to identify exactly what their salespeople truly need to be successful. As a result, they make
investments they hope will improve performance, but too often dont achieve the results they expect.
Capturing the Voice of the Sales Force gives the sales force an opportunity to be heard, and helps leaders identify and prioritize
investment decisions that will accelerate performance results.
For these reasons, and as 2018 planning approaches, we sought to check the pulse of frontline sales managers and sales professionals
to learn what they need to succeed next year. Seven hundred and ninety participants completed our online survey, and provided
sufficient demographic information to enable us to analyze different data segments.

Industry Performance

Services
22%
Behind Plan
Technology 35%
36%

Manufacturing Exceeding
21% Plan 65%

Life Sciences
16%
Other n= 790
5%

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 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
WHAT SALES PROFESSIONALS AND MANAGERS SAY THEY NEED TO
SUCCEED IN 2018
Survey participants were presented a list of performance improvement opportunities in four categories: Creating Demand, Winning
Deals, Growing Accounts and Managing Performance. They were then asked to choose the top three in each category they thought
would have the greatest impact on their success in 2018. The results below are those that received the most votes in the survey.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
CREATING DEMAND
Survey participants were presented the list of initiatives below, in random order, for creating more demand. They were then asked to
choose the top three they thought would have the greatest impact on their success in 2018. The table below shows the overall results,
results broken out by industry, and lastly a comparison against last years overall results.

Create Demand All Fin Serv Ind-Mfg Biz Serv Tech H Care 2016
Begin account-focused marketing directed at specific high potential target prospects 1 2 2 1 1 1
Increase general awareness of our brand in the market 2 1 3 2
Provide better qualified marketing-generated opportunities 3 2 3
Provide more compelling marketing content to motivate prospects off of the status quo 4 3 1 2 3
Provide more marketing-generated opportunities 5 2 3 3
Define the triggers that indicate a potential need for our solutions 6
Provide training to update my prospecting skills 7 1
Provide better guidance for engaging with unresponsive prospects 8
Provide tools to improve my prospecting efficiency 8 1
Provide better tools to research prospects 9

Key Takeaways
1. Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment

The top needs of salespeople to create more demandaccount-based marketing, increased brand awareness and better qualified
marketing-generated opportunitiesall require considerable marketing resources and alignment to execute.

As you begin your sales planning process for 2018, be sure to involve marketing. Traditionally, sales and marketing alignment focused
on process issues, such as when to hand-off a lead from one function to the next.

As buyer behavior has shifted, the need for alignment in additional areas such as messaging, integrated goals, support roles and
responsibilities has become even more essential for success. This is especially true for activities such as account-based marketing.
Strategic planning is the perfect opportunity to initiate this higher level of interdependence and alignment.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
CREATING DEMAND

Key Takeaways
2. Dont Neglect Brand Building Investments

The competitive landscape in most B2B industries is changing faster than ever. Venture capital is plentiful and disruptive new players seemingly emerge
everyday. This makes it more difficult for you to stay top-of-mind with buyers and stand out as a trusted partner, but you cant give up. Being out of
sight and out of mind creates some real challenges for your sellers.

Investing in brand building becomes even more challenging as CMOs face pressure to account for every dollar of investment. Demand generation
activities, such as paid search, are very favorable because it is easy to track impact and the payoff is immediate. However, brand influences how people
search and the keywords they use. Its important to continue to invest in activities that build favorable brand, even if the payoff is longer-term and
harder to track.

Every employee in an organization is now a brand ambassador, and should be trained to act like one. Your sales people cant rely solely on marketing,
and should be expected to incorporate basic micro-marketing activities that build brand awareness in their regions or industries.

3. Dont Lose Sight of Quality Over Quantity

When it comes to leads, Marketers are conditioned to believe that more is better. However, this is not productive if leads dont result in opportunities
that are worthwhile for your salespeople to pursue and capable of winning.

As you begin planning for 2018, take a look back at your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and ask yourself if and
how these are changing. Examine your most significant wins and losses to determine who really is an ideal customer and who is not, and identify the
factors that make them ideal. Use this insight to re-calibrate what you really need from your marketing team. This will help them to focus their time and
resources more effectively for you.

Additionally, look at your revenue mix, average deal size and win rates to determine more precisely how many opportunities you need marketing to
contribute and the size of those opportunities to achieve your goals. This will help everyone get better aligned, and more realistically identify the budget
and resources necessary for your marketing team to execute on the plan.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
WINNING DEALS
Survey participants were presented the list of initiatives below, in random order, for winning more deals. They were then asked to
choose the top three they thought would have the greatest impact on their success in 2018. The table below shows the overall results,
results broken out by industry, and lastly a comparison against last years overall results.
Win Deals All Fin Serv Ind-Mfg Biz Serv Tech H Care 2016
Help me more effectively justify our solutions value to buyers 1 1 2 1 1 2
Help me more effectively differentiate from our competition 2 2 1 2 1 1
Provide more support for accessing executive-level decision makers 3 2 3 3
Help me more effectively position our products and services 4 3
Help me improve my consultative sales conversation skills 5 2
Help me overcome more no decision situations 6 3
Help me generate quality proposals better and faster 7
Help me improve my sales presentation and negotiation skills 8 3
Help me to provide better tools, such as demos and success stories 9 3
Provide tools to help guide me through the sales process 10
Provide me with better product training 11

Key Takeaways
1. To Justify Value Creation, You Must Measure Value Creation

More than ever, buyers want to know the expected return on their investment in your solution. If sellers dont have this information,
then they will probably lose the opportunity to the competition or no decision, or they will make something up that will bite them in the
behind come renewal time.

Justifying the value you deliver to your customers requires developing the discipline to measure the value you create for customers. Its
easy to avoid identifying key performance indicators and collecting benchmarks because it creates extra work for you and your
customer. However, most customers will be receptive to this because it is also important for them to know the ROI of your solution. The
extra effort will help you win more business, and better retain and grow accounts.

Justifying value is best done from pre-sale to implementation and on-going application. These latter activities often fall into the realm of
product managers and customer success managers. This will require a collaborative effort and a defined methodology for how you work
with customers. Planning for 2018 is the perfect opportunity to rally the organization behind this effort and secure funding for the
resources necessary for successful execution.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
WINNING DEALS

Key Takeaways
2. Ask Your Customers Why They Chose You

As you begin planning for 2018, we recommend conducting regular win-loss interviews with buyers. Many buyers go through a rigorous sourcing
exercise to identify potential vendors. In the process, they become an incredible source of market and competitive insight into your strengths and
weaknesses, and what really differentiates you from you competition.

Too few organizations ask buyers why they really chose you (or not). Product managers will do this, but focus too heavily on product features and
price. And, they seldom share information with sales and marketing teams to improve win rates. In addition to product preferences and price, ask
the buyer about their overall experience buying from you. Learn how they realized a need and went through their buying process. Often there is
something beyond the product and price that tipped the decision in your favor. Dont make assumptions!

3. Leverage Trigger Events and Other Buyer-intent Signals

To better access executive-level decision makers, timing and preparation matter most.

Leverage trigger events that indicate when they will be most receptive to you. For example, you might monitor the news wires for new executive
hire announcements. Newly hired executives often have a mandate to drive change in an organization, and make investments necessary to
improve or accelerate performance.

As the publishing industry dies, some publishers are transforming into sources of buyer-intent intelligence. They claim that they can correlate
content download activity by type and frequency to an organizations intention to purchase a related solution. Its too early to tell if these
predictions are really valid, but predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence are progressing in leaps and bounds.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
GROWING ACCOUNTS
Survey participants were presented the list of initiatives below, in random order, for growing accounts. They were then asked to choose
the top three they thought would have the greatest impact on their success in 2018. The table below shows the overall results, results
broken out by industry, and lastly a comparison against last years overall results.
Grow Accounts All Fin Serv Ind-Mfg Biz Serv Tech H Care 2016
Provide better content to stimulate cross-selling and upselling 1 1 1 2 2 3
Help me improve my executive-level selling skills 2 1 1 1 2
Provide a better account planning methodology 3 3 3 2 2
Help me identify new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities in accounts 4 3 3 3 2 3
Provide better content to help me stay engaged with key contacts 5 1 2 3
Help me quantify the impact weve made in strategic accounts 6 3 1
Help me expand relationships in accounts beyond purchasing/procurement contacts 7 2
Help me gain access beyond my initial contact in accounts 8
Enable better account management execution in CRM 9 3 3
Provide better tools to identify key contacts in accounts 10 2
Help me communicate and get credit for value we provide to accounts 10 3 3
Provide better access to account information 11

Key Takeaways
1. Connect the Cross-selling Dots

Every organization wants their people to cross-sell and upsell, but too few offer the formula to enable success.

Successful cross-selling and upselling begins by delivering on promises set during the initial sale, but continues through additional
products, services or solutions that solve problems and unlock value for the customer. Ideally, there are synergies across your solution
set to make your relationship with clients even more compelling.

The best cross-selling organizations connect the dots across their product set to help their sales and customer success teams understand
how solutions fit together and create value. They bring this roadmap to life through content such as use cases and customer interviews
that sales and success teams can leverage to create and close cross-selling opportunities.

Reviewing how you quantify and express the value of your solutions will enable you to see the problems youve solved for your
customers and how youve made a difference in their businesses. This exercise provides direction to your marketing teams for creating
useful success stories and content that will better support cross-selling and upselling.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
GROWING ACCOUNTS

Key Takeaways
2. Executive Level Selling Skills Require Continuous Competency Development

When your salespeople gain a meeting with an executive-level buyer, its a precious opportunity. Yet according to Forrester Research, executive buyers
tell us that only 20% of the salespeople they meet with are successful in achieving their expectations and creating value. Only one in four of these
salespeople get agreement from executive buyers to meet again.

Your reps must be prepared to create value for buyers during these valuable opportunities. This means doing more than rehashing products specs and
prices that might resonate with procurement-level buyers, but that fail to hit the mark with executives.

Successful executive-level selling requires you to understanding your buyer and the competencies necessary for a successful conversation. Then, assessing
your team to identify gaps, creating individual development plans, and offering continuous learning and coaching to improve. Its not enough to watch a
video and pass a quiz -- reps must demonstrate competence in live action.

To learn more about how we do this, visit www.myspi1.com.

3. Account Planning is a Team Sport

As you plan for the new year, be explicit about the support you need from other functional areas. This should include reviewing your account planning
methodology and ensuring that all support needs and commitments are reflected in the approach.

Also, be clear about the amount of new business you expect to generate in existing versus new accounts, the amount of new business you expect to
generate in existing accounts, and who you expect to generate those opportunities.

The greater the transparency and buy-in, the more successful the outcome.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
MANAGING PERFORMANCE
Survey participants were presented the list of initiatives below, in random order, for managing performance. They were then asked to
choose the top three they thought would have the greatest impact on their success in 2018. The table below shows the overall results,
results broken out by industry, and lastly a comparison against last years overall results.
Manage Performance All Fin Serv Ind-Mfg Biz Serv Tech H Care 2016
Reduce the amount of time I spend on non-selling activities 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Regularly share success stories and tribal knowledge 2 2 3 2 2
Help me to better understand our buyers 3 3 2 3
Ensure that my quota is reasonable and attainable, given the current market 4 2 2
Make our CRM system less cumbersome 5 2 3 3
Ensure my manager has good sales coaching skills 6 2 3
Make my assigned territory or accounts sufficient to attain sales goals 7
Make my compensation plan clear and easy to manage 8
Help me to better understand our companys vision and strategy 9
Ensure I get sufficient time with my manager 10 3

Key Takeaways
1. Time is Still Money!

Participants in our study were adamant about reducing the time spent on non-selling activities, but there was no clear consensus on
what non-sales activities consume the most time. As you begin planning for next year, we recommend conducting a brief time and activity
survey to identify specific opportunities for increasing selling time. As you plan for next year, seek how you can remove obstacles that
impact productivity.

2. When it Comes to Sales Comp, You Gotta Keep it Real

Salespeople and managers expressed significant concern about the process used to set quotas and compensation. It is important to use
valid assumptions based on current market reality, have a practical strategy for reaching organizational goals, and a clear plan for how
sellers will attain individual targets. When setting quotas, involve your marketing and product management teams, and be sure they will
provide the support you need to make your numbers.

Keep in mind the health of your current pipeline, win rates, average deal size and sales cycle lengths. If you dont have a plan for how you
will improve each of these variables that impact quota attainment, then your plan will probably be met with cynicism and resistance. This
leads to disengagement and turnover of good people.

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 INSIGHT FOR 2018 PLANNING
MANAGING PERFORMANCE

Key Takeaways
3. The Customer is Still King!

We live in a world of continuous change, and more than ever you must know how your customers and market are changing.

Customer insight roles are common in consumer products industries, but rare in business-to-business companies. As a result, no one is on point to collect
and share insight that help the overall business improve. These people should be required to pick up the phone and learn directly from the customer how
their business is changing and what it means for the vendors or partners they choose. Win-loss reviews and periodic business reviews are an excellent
event to direct your activity and create a reason to act.

4. Sharing is Caring and Winning is Contagious

In sales, a good deal of the knowledge about products, processes and customers is not written downit is in the reps and managers heads. This "tribal
knowledge," is a driving force behind innovation and is critical to the company's competitive advantage.

Every company needs to assess both the written knowledge and tribal knowledge. At the same time, they need to identify the "tribal knowledge gurus" in
the company. The objective is to "download" the information from the gurus' brains, and document it, before it walks out the door.

In the spirit of showing your people a path to success, establish a regular cadence of capturing and sharing success stories, and using this insight to
continuously improve. As you plan, look back on recent successes and determine what you can replicate. Start by regularly interviewing reps and
managers who win significant deals. In addition to capturing tribal knowledge, you are recognizing people for a job well done. This helps motivate and
retain your top people.

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 ABOUT SPI

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