The science of selling 中

It’s common to talk about “the art of selling,” but all the sales executives we interviewed put more science than art into their winning formulas. These leaders used data and analysis to diagnose their go-to-market approaches, sales processes, channels, technology, talent, and leadership.

Today’s marketplace clearly requires companies to be very, very good at selling and yet when 1,000 leading US and European companies were analyzed, it was shown over half would create greater value if they focused more on creating sales growth rather than on achieving productivity improvements or greater operating efficiencies. Once a company is achieving 15 percent return on invested capital, it will create more shareholder value by improving its revenue growth than it will by trying to continue to improve its return on invested capital.

This means the best way to beat the market today is to put sales at the heart of your growth agenda. Based on a study of more than 100 large global companies (averaging $31 billion in revenues, $47 billion market capitalization and 86,000 employees) who have consistently outperformed their peers in terms of growth and profitability over a five year period, it became clear there were five proven strategies for driving and sustaining sales growth: