How To Build Your Sales Execution Blueprint for Success

Every sales organization needs a buyer-driven sales methodology that arms sellers with knowledge and tools to effectively qualify, manage, and close sales opportunities.

The right sales process should encourage and equip your sales team for success. If sales organizations don’t get it right, their sales execution process can actually hinder sellers instead of enable them.

Whether you’re selling in a face-to-face traditional model or a web-facing SaaS model, your sales execution process should follow an established blueprint for success. Execution may vary slightly, depending on your sales environment, but your benchmarks should remain the same.

A great sales operating rhythm will:

1. Align your sales process with your customer’s buying process


2. Establish standards for qualifying sales opportunities – both in and out


3. Support sellers in consistently capturing, creating and communicating value

Here are three key questions to help sales leaders assess, align and recalibrate their sales process:

How Consistent Are My Sales Messages?

Today’s B2B buyers spend a lot of up-front time researching solutions online. Your brand, your solutions, your differentiators, your customer success stories – potential buyers are looking for them, whether they’re out there or not. A savvy buyer does his/her homework to narrow down vendor options and select a short-list of companies and needed solutions.

To make that short-list, your sales messages, brand information and customer engagement tools need to be on-target and crystal clear in the marketplace. In a sea of competitive information, your communication needs to be crystal clear regarding the challenges you address, the value customers receive and your success metrics that provide proof.

Whether it’s in digital messages in the marketplace or in face-to-face conversations with a seller, buyers need clarity in order to make a decision. If your sales messaging and execution processes are right, they will perfectly align with the information your customers need and pave the way for sales success.

An organization’s value messages need to communicate value from the following three positions:

• Value Comprehension – The position and ability to identify and respond to trends in the market.


• Value Offering – The position and ability to translate market and customer trends into world-class product and service offerings.


• Value Engagement – The position and ability to articulate value and differentiation at key “moments of truth” throughout the customer life cycle.

How Well Does My Sales Process Align With My Buyer’s Process?

Whether you pique a buyer’s interest online or face to face, your company needs a common language that drives consistency in front of the customer. Think of this common language as your currency of value.

Your currency of value consists of positive business outcomes (PBOs), required capabilities and results metrics that you use to align your solution with your buyers’ needs. Clearly defined roles and activities for sellers throughout the customer engagement process and established standards for opportunity qualification will help sellers create, communicate and capture value in a consistent way.

Consistent processes and messages that uncover customer needs and articulate how your solutions help address those needs, ensure that the right sales opportunities are identified, qualified and accelerated throughout the sales process.

How Well Does My Process Support My Sales Team?

An operating rhythm that consistently helps your team qualify, advance, and close sales opportunities is an essential tenant for sales process success. Ask yourself these essential questions to understand if your current sales process is helping or hindering your sellers.

Sales Process Essential Questions:

• Is our sales process aligned with our customer’s buying process?


• Do we have a common language that drives consistent messaging in all communication channels and at each stage of the buying cycle?


• Do we have a standard process to ensure opportunities are qualified consistently?


• Does our operating cadence prevent sellers from taking short cuts in the sales process?


• Do we have clear customer outcomes that indicate movement through the buying stages?

How To Build Your Sales Execution Blueprint for Success