I am approached nearly every week by young companies that want to accelerate revenue. Many lack a sales and marketing organization to drive growth and are searching for resources to help them reach their goals. For most of these firms they are in the early stages of a new business or about to launch a new product.
While these firms are anxious to realize "hockey stick" growth rates most are actually a long way from significant growth. The reason is due to the learning curve that rests before them. A number of potential issues that require interaction with customers must be addressed and resolved before growth can occur. These issues may include product fit within specific market segments, packaging and delivery issues, selling process steps and the like.
This learning has been dubbed the Sales Learning Curve by Mark Leslie, CEO of Veritas, the 5th largest software company. The SLC is an adaptation from the Manufacturing Learning Curve that says a number of units must be produced in order to gain manufacturing efficiency and reduce production costs.
The same principle applies to sales development in the form of learning about market and customer driven issues and how they impact sales acceleration.
Learn more about the SLC on another blog and see if it applies to your business.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Sales Learning Curve
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1 comment:
Mark Leslie's article is a must read for any bootstrapped or recently funded start-up CEO.
I have seen too many start-ups flush with new A or B round cash make this critical error in building out a team of 8,10,12 field personnel - before experiencing their first 200K quarter....yes, I said quarter.
It is a proverbial kiss of death for start-ups, particularly those in nascent markets and almost inevitable leads to a complete restart scenario.
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