4 Key Questions to Ask When Evaluating Sales Execution Vendors
Before choosing a sales execution platform, you want to understand the technology landscape and ask the right questions. The outline of questions below can be used to dissect the breadth and quality of each vendor’s capabilities.
1. Prospecting capabilities:
How does your platform help me...
Understand what message and sequence pattern works best with specific audiences?
Automate workflows so that sellers focus on high-value selling activities?
Enable sellers to prioritize leads and actions with the greatest expected value?
2. Deal management capabilities:
How does your platform help me...
Coach sellers in real-time with things like objection handling, product positioning, competitive differentiators, and remembering to listen more than they talk?
Define, keep track of, and improve next steps in the buying process?
Identify why deals are slipping and provide a corrective course of action?
3. Forecasting capabilities:
How does your platform help me...
Easily identify changes in forecast projections and underlying causes?
Understand whether I have sufficient pipeline coverage and strong enough conversion rates to meet my revenue targets?
Efficiently model different forecast outcomes and scenarios?
4. Sales intelligence / security capabilities:
How does your platform help me...
Translate analytics and insights into actionable steps for our team?
Connect sales data, applications, and processes together?
Govern the application and permissions across a broad user base?
Implementing a sales execution platform is a transformation journey, not a "light switch" moment.
Taking an incremental approach is oftentimes the best way to ensure a successful rollout and long-term value. Whether you’re looking to optimize your capabilities on an existing sales execution platform or just starting to solve a core sales execution challenge, it’s important to find a solution that can scale alongside the growing needs of your business.
To avoid the challenges that arise with a plethora of point solutions, you must choose a vendor that can meet your current and future sales execution requirements by offering the full suite of capabilities that separate sales execution platforms from point solutions.
Industry-leading revenue organizations will continue to differentiate themselves apart from deploying the full arsenal of sales execution tools. Doing this on one platform instead of multiple-point solutions will ultimately help you close the Sales Execution Gap.