A sales ramp plan outlines the onboarding process for new sales reps, detailing training and expectations for their first few months. Ramp plans will differ based on the length of average sales cycles at each business. This is important to get right, otherwise you end up chucking talented salespeople out the door before they have a chance to produce revenue which is costly for the business. Put demo and pipeline metrics in place to help your sales team track to the ramp plan.

Sales territories divide regions or markets to assign specific sales reps responsibility for a defined area.

You want to keep sales hungry. Sales hunters are competitive by nature but can get complacent just like everyone else. Setting sales territories is a good way to do this but can be restrictive if you implement this structure too soon. When reps start bumping into one another on the same deals, consider putting territory structures in place. Having open territories if you are starting to grow a sales team is a great way to attract experienced talent. Experienced sales reps know if they can get in early to an open field, the chances of them maximizing their comp plan is very high.

Consider factors like geography, target customer density, potential revenue, and sales rep capacity. Evaluate your total addressable market, and consider your sales cycle length. Review your close ratios, and then look at the math between how many deals you want each rep to close. Once you have laid all this math out infront of you, categorize by state, county, or zip code (county and zip code are typically reserved for very densely populated prospective client territories. State is most common). Then spend time in excel balancing your territories. Take sales rep seniority into consideration. A more senior rep can usually handle a larger sales territory.

Create a sales playbook that outlines processes, strategies, canned FAQs responses and best practices to guide your sales team. As a founder, you have already done the legwork to identify your ideal customer and establish a path that converts prospects to revenue at your business. If you work with someone that understands what sales motions translate to repeatable winning strategies, you can pass on a sales playbook that accelerates revenue growth for your sales team and cut down on sales onboarding time. 

Hire your first sales rep when you’ve validated your product fit and ideal customer profile. When you can point sales at specific targets, it’s time to hire. If you hire sales before product fit and ICP occur, you’ll waste a lot of people’s time, and waste a lot of your money before seeing predictable revenue growth. Pick your path wisely.

Hire a second sales rep as your customer base grows and your initial sales rep can’t handle the workload alone.

If you can afford multiple sales hires, provide adequate ramp runway, and support their efforts, the effort ramping 1 sales rep vs. 3 is not that different. Yes, you need to dedicate plenty of 1:1 time, but these people will learn from each other during ramp and ultimately speed up revenue growth.

Hire a sales manager when you have multiple sales reps who need coaching, and you want to streamline sales operations.

Hire a Director or VP of Sales when your sales team is large and requires strategic leadership and direction for the entire sales organization.

Yes, a sales playbook helps standardize your sales approach, onboard new reps, and improve overall team performance.

A sales playbook is a comprehensive living document outlining your sales strategies, processes, and best practices. These tools include resources such as: sample conversation openers for cold calling, ideal customer profiles for your business, an elevator pitch including company culture and differentiators, most common objections and canned responses. 28% of sales pros say the sales process taking too long is the biggest reason prospects back out of deals (HubSpot Sales Trends report for 2023). An effective sales playbook removes the guesswork for sellers.

Yes, free trials can be effective for SaaS and digital products to allow potential customers to experience your offering. Free trials can be a great way to grow leads and revenue, but only if you have automated away the heavy-lifting with a self-service sign-up model. You need a very clever and educational drip campaign to nurture free trial users with tips that increase product utilization. Ideally, you have guided product steps built into your free trial platform that walk users through getting the most out of your product. These steps should be so easy, even an intern with very little industry knowledge can get up and running quickly. If you have analytics built into your platform that trigger sales to engage, even better. If you can’t do these steps with your platform and require a CSM for configuration, free trials are most likely not for you. Spend effort elsewhere to drive revenue.

This one is very hard work. Don’t let someone try to sell you a magic bullet. First identify your personas and their pain points they care about. Then clearly connected these pain points to your solution. Then put together an automated email cadence with personalization and educate, educate, educate before having sales engage to cut down on sales time waste. Focus on one pain point per email and how your solution solves this pain. There are loads of free resources that help you with cold calling / cold outbound structure. Then layer in various methods like networking, content marketing, paid advertising, and lead generation tools to find potential customers. Gong.io offers an AWESOME 21 day structure based on assessing 800k+ emails to book meetings.

Qualify leads by assessing their fit with your product or service, budget, authority to buy, need, and timeline (BANT). Qualify and re-verify often throughout the sales process. Don’t just check the box on these questions if you get the answer you’re looking for. Ask follow up questions about the why behind their answer. Attach to business pain points and time bound events. Try asking: Has anything changed since our last meeting? To spot new risks.

Track lead source, interaction history, engagement metrics, sales cycle timeline from qualification to pricing and the time lapse between each stage to optimize your sales process. Pre-pandemic data said 8-12 touch points convert a qualified buyer. Post-pandemic data says all the way up to 18 touch points. A touch point is: a phone call, a direct email from a sales rep, LinkedIn connection request/message, sending a video, drip campaign, re-marketing post, impressions on social channels, etc.

Have sales update opportunities immediately when new information is obtained. Run weekly pipeline review sessions. Pair this practice with qualification deal inspection and criteria for winning deals. Use historical data, pipeline analysis, and input from your sales team to project future revenue. 

Forecast revenue regularly, usually on a monthly or quarterly basis, to plan and allocate resources effectively. Pair this practice with weekly pipeline review meetings and reports. Weekly pipeline review meetings allow everyone involved to get help on deal progress and cover blind spots. This exercise also provides visibility to management on forecast trends.

Develop a clear deal qualification process with defined stages and criteria to estimate the likelihood of closure. This is based on your historical sales wins.

Assess pricing by considering costs, market research, competitor pricing, and prospecting/customer win/loss feedback.

Calculate discounts based on factors like deal size, competition, and customer value. Avoid excessive discounting. Do not lose money on deals to win customers or promises of future revenue.