Entrepreneurs who lack a sales background (most entrepreneurs) often do not fully appreciate all of the things that need to be in place before a company can commercially succeed and grow. As the saying goes: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”.
A structured and comprehensive sales audit, conducted by a qualified third party can be enormously valuable to these entrepreneurs, dramatically improve their sales results and increase the value of their precious companies. The audit can identify blind-spots and help entrepreneurs better appreciate where and why holes in their commercialization plan are hindering results.
There are two aspects to this. One is to have the knowledge of what goes into a sales audit. The other is to make sure that you are accurately and honestly assessing where your company stands with respect to the items on the audit document. Often, entrepreneurs give themselves and their companies credit for things that are still very immature and ineffective. That is why having the audit conducted by a qualified third party is essential.
Getting your sales house in order is critical if you ever want to scale your business, and who doesn’t? Many early-stage companies see their growth stall because only the founder/CEO can sell the product. They may go through several evolutions of sales people that all lead to failure. Sometimes this is a hiring challenge and sometimes it is an on-boarding challenge. In either case, it is the responsibility of the founder/CEO to know how to scale the business. And this can be especially challenging if the company has taken on outside investors who are looking for (or demanding) a return. Not understanding the value of the sales audit or honestly evaluating the company position against it can cause serious problems for the founder/CEO and ultimately lead to board or shareholder revolt.
The sales audit has a range of issues that go beyond pure sales and covers marketing, messaging, lead generation, conversion rates, on-boarding, sales process, customer support and implementation, product launch, contract issues, integration with other products as well as potential partner opportunities. It is a comprehensive 360 degree look at your commercialization plan.
Write to arbordakota@me.com to get your copy of the Arbor Dakota Sales Audit document. More importantly, schedule time with us to go over it and evaluate how your company performs against that audit.