This afternoon I had the chance to do my monthly EO Accelerator Accountability Group mentoring with six Atlanta entrepreneurs working hard to scale their business. After doing individual business updates and a lightning round of quick Q&A, we jumped into discussion topics around sales, marketing, and prospect nurturing (part of marketing).
After a couple entrepreneurs talked I was quickly reminded that the biggest hurdle for most entrepreneurs to reach $1 million in revenue is a reproducible sales process not limited to referrals. Yes, referrals are great, and should not be ignored, but most startups are going to have a hard time to scaling to $1 million in revenue within three years without a reproducible sales process. Here are some factors in a reproducible sales process:
- Ability to generate leads or talk to prospects in a reliable manner
- Capability to perform a set of sales steps and actions that produce results
- Consistent sales cycle, approachable buyers, and known tactics
Again, this isn’t required to be a successful startup, but the ones I’ve seen scale have these components. My recommendation is to work hard to find and build a reproducible sales process.
What else? What other factors go into a reproducible sales process?
David Cummings on Startups 