Sales Productivity Blueprint Elements of a Successful Sales Plan A guide to building the right sales plan for your business Brian Geery and Thomas Barrieau Managing Partners © 2011 Sales Productivity Architects www.salesproductivityarchitects.com Elements of a Successful Sales Plan This document is one in a series of Sales Productivity Blueprints. Sponsored by Sales Productivity Architects (www.salesproductivityarchitects.com), they provide in-depth analysis and discussion of issues that impact a sales organization's ability to sell effectively and efficiently. By providing actionable guidance you can use, they are a blueprint to your sales success. We also invite you to visit the The Sales Operations Blog (salesoperationsblog.com). Dedicated to the goal of educating and informing its readers, our blog provides timely insights into the science of selling by regularly discussing sales operations strategy, best practices, innovations, and industry trends. Table of Contents Introduction – the Importance of Planning ................................................................. 3 The Planning Process ..................................................................................................... 3 A team-based approach ....................................................................................................... 3 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan ............................................................................ 4 Top-Tier Prospect Definition .................................................................................................... 4 Your Sales-Cycle and the Customer’s Buy-Cycle ................................................................ 5 Go-to-Market Strategy ............................................................................................................ 5 Barriers to be Overcome......................................................................................................... 5 Competitive Strategy and Positioning .................................................................................. 6 Value Proposition and Sales Presentation Strategy ............................................................. 6 Alignment with Marketing ....................................................................................................... 7 Establishing Key Performance Indicators – Goal Setting and Quota Assignment ........... 7 CRM – Pipeline Management and Forecasting .................................................................. 8 Sales 2.0 and Other Types of Sales Automation ................................................................... 8 Sales Automation Training and Support................................................................................ 9 Talent Recruitment – Attracting and Hiring Top Talent ....................................................... 9 Compensation Strategy ........................................................................................................ 11 Team Meetings....................................................................................................................... 12 Training .................................................................................................................................... 12 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 13 Sales Productivity Architects ...................................................................................... 14 About the authors .................................................................................................................. 14 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 2 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Introduction – the Importance of Planning “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” — Alan Lakein “It pays to plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.” — Unknown “He who fails to plan, plans to fail” — Proverb The quotes above all refer to the importance of planning and can easily be applied to sales. The problem for many of us, however, is where to begin the sales planning process. At Sales Productivity Architects, we are often asked to assist our clients with the development of their sales plans. Over the course of many years doing this for dozens of clients, we’ve been able to compile a list of elements that we believe make up a successful sales plan. This blueprint is designed to give you a head start with the planning process, anticipate challenges to be overcome, and help you gain consensus among key stakeholders and your sales team on priorities for the coming year. It can be used in whole or in part; not all elements are essential to all sales organizations. Your goal should be to create a framework for your sales planning that can become a living document that changes over time. The Planning Process If you’re starting from scratch, it’s important to set reasonable goals. A fully fleshed out sales plan may take considerable time to develop and best be tackled in phases. The very act of planning will bring to awareness those critical success factors around which you should build your strategy. As that strategy evolves, the annual planning process will involve incrementally refining your existing plan based on what worked in the past year, what didn’t, and what new challenges need to be addressed. Herein lies one of the most valuable aspects of conducting regular sales planning — it gives you the opportunity to fine-tune your sales engine over time. We’d love to hear from readers what additional elements they find valuable to include in a sales plan. Please feel free to give us your feedback by emailing us at [email protected]. A team-based approach In addition to guiding the behaviors of your team, your sales plan should also dictate how members of your organization interact with other departments, how those departments interact with you, and what you can reasonably expect from each other. As such, it’s a best practice to build your sales plan in cooperation with other key stakeholders – the department heads of those groups your organization frequently interacts with. Consideration should be given to including representation from the following functional areas in your planning process: 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 3 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan • Sales operations — who should be your chief partner for this effort • Marketing — with whom your goals should be closely aligned • Human resources — for any personnel or compensation issues • IT — to discuss any automation implications of your plan • Customer service/support — to ensure agreed-upon hand-offs between groups • Finance (potentially) — for budget allocation and/or compensation issues Once you’ve assembled your team, we suggest that you review the sales plan elements listed below and determine which ones will help your sales organization succeed. Give the members of your planning team the opportunity to add or subtract elements they think will be critical to your sales success and their interactions with the sales organization. The more you give other key stakeholders the opportunity to have input to your plan, the more they will be invested in its success. Then, schedule time – preferably offsite – with the appropriate people to write your sales plan. It may be suitable for some people to attend the entire planning session (e.g., your sales operations lead, the head of marketing, etc.), but others may only have constructive input on part of the plan (e.g., your contact within IT, your finance representative, etc.). Prepare a well thought out, timestamped agenda in advance, giving yourself ample time to discuss each part of the plan, and then show respect for people’s time by inviting them to join only those portions of the meeting that are relevant to them. Once you’ve got the basics of your plan established in your planning meeting, commit it to paper and give everybody an opportunity to provide feedback. You might want to consider asking a fellow sales or sales operations leader from another non-competing company to provide feedback. Sales Productivity Architects has reviewed many sales plans and we’d be happy to take a look at yours to provide our feedback as well. If you’re ready to get started, we can now jump into the elements of a successful sales plan… Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Top-Tier Prospect Definition Knowing who your best prospects are is invaluable. This knowledge will shape your marketing efforts, allow you to properly qualify leads, and help your sales professionals know where they should be directing their time and energy. With this in mind, the following questions can help you define your top-tier prospects. • What are the defining characteristics of prospects that are mostly likely to buy? • What are the decision makers’ profiles (buyer personas)? • How are non-prospects defined (those we should not pursue)? • What qualifying questions can be asked that will help identify a top-tier prospect? • What are the red flags that indicate a prospect is a poor one? 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 4 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Your Sales-Cycle and the Customer’s Buy-Cycle Your sales plan should obviously document your sales-cycle (i.e., the physical actions a sales professional must take in order to sell), but it should also document your customer’s buy-cycle (i.e., the physical actions a prospect must take in order to buy). A well-designed sales plan will tightly coordinate the selling process that guides the behavior of your sales team with the purchase-decision process that dictates the behavior of top-tier prospects. This sales-cycle/buycycle alignment will allow you to make sure you’re providing your sales professionals with the right resources and information, at the right time, and in the right place to move prospects to the next stage of the selling process — a concept that is at the heart of the practice of Sales Enablement (see our blog, The Sales Operations Blog, for further discussion of Sales Enablement). Having clear criteria that determine how opportunities advance from one sales stage to the next will be critical for good CRM data-entry discipline. Combined with an understanding of your conversion rate for each stage, consistent categorization of opportunities in the pipeline is the key to accurate forecasting. Once you have a handle on your forecasting, you are in a much better position to assign meaningful activity targets and revenue goals for your sales team. • What are the key elements of the customer buy-cycle? • How will we lead prospects through the customer buy-cycle? How will they benefit by taking the next step? • What are the key elements of your sales-cycle? • What are the key objectives for each step of your sales-cycle? • What quantity of each of these actions is required to achieve sales goals (lead to close ratio)? Go-to-Market Strategy Your go-to-market strategy is the mechanism by which you will deliver your unique value proposition to your target market. It will also determine the channels your company will use to connect with your prospects/customers and the operational processes you develop (e.g., online ordering) to guide customer interactions from initial contact through fulfillment. At larger companies, marketing often develops this; at smaller companies, it may fall largely in the lap of a sales leader. That said, sales should always be at the table when the go-to-market strategy is discussed and you should have marketing present when you discuss its implications for your sales plan. • How will we reach our target audience of prospects? • How will we engage our target prospect in conversation? • What are the reasons (catalysts) a prospect will have interest/motivation to buy? • What will be your distribution strategy and how will that affect sales? Barriers to be Overcome Removing objections is one of the most important activities that sales professionals engage in. As such, careful consideration should be given to barriers that your team is likely to run into. The 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 5 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan more you anticipate them and develop strategies for overcoming them, the less likely you are to be surprised by losing a deal. It’s worth noting here that barriers tend to vary by sales stage. As such, an excellent best practice for Sales Enablement is to use your CRM system to make objection removal information selectively available based on the sales stage a given opportunity is at. • What are the barriers to sales success (competition from other companies, decision to do nothing, internal solution, no time, etc.)? • How do they vary by sales stage? • What are common objections? o Who tends to express each objection? o How is the objection typically articulated? • How will we remove objections in the marketing and sales process? • What new information can sales professionals provide that will help remove the objection? • How will we make objection removal information available to the sales force? Competitive Strategy and Positioning Competitive strategy and positioning is another area where marketing should be heavily involved. While it is your sales professionals who will be most directly addressing competitive threats, marketing is in the best position to do competitive research and develop competitive positioning that your team can use. Again, close alignment between these two organizations will benefit all. Marketing needs to get competitive intelligence to sales as quickly as possible and sales needs to let marketing know when they encounter new competitive threats in the marketplace. As similarly noted above, sales leaders at smaller companies may have more of this element falling in their lap. • How do we define “competition?” o Other companies? o Competing priorities on the part of the prospect? o Getting access to a prospect’s time? o Clearly demonstrating ROI? o Complexity associated with the implementation process? o Other? • How will we win? • How will marketing get competitive intelligence and positioning to sales? • How will sales report new competitive threats to marketing? Value Proposition and Sales Presentation Strategy Your sales presentation strategy is where your go-to-market strategy gets translated into actual sales conversations. Instead of globally addressing how you will deliver your unique value proposition to your target market, it addresses how you will present it to the prospect right in front of you. Because a sales interaction can be significantly more in-depth than a marketing blurb, you have the opportunity to make a compelling case. This should include positioning your company’s 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 6 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan offering as a real solution to your prospect’s needs, something that delivers significant ROI, and something that has the endorsement of people whose opinion your prospect will respect. • How do we present our value proposition as part of the sales process? • What is unique about it that differentiates us from the competition? • What is compelling about it and will increase customer urgency? o How does it solve a prospect’s business challenges? o Why should a prospect buy now? • How is ROI achieved? Does it reduce expense, increase revenue, or both? • What endorsement from trusted/respected authorities can be used? • Do we need to educate before we can sell? • Will the prospect have implementation or training challenges that we can proactively address? Alignment with Marketing Experienced sales leaders understand that strong sales and marketing alignment is a critical sales success factor. For this reason, a clear articulation of how sales and marketing partner to create and develop sales opportunities — from prospect awareness through the price a customer pays at the close of a deal — is an essential part of any sales plan. This section could contain literally dozens of questions worth asking, but we will keep it to the most important ones. • What is the core marketing message? • What are the key touch-points at which the sales team will deliver this message (e.g., email signatures, inbound and outbound voicemail messages, automated attendant scripts, website visitor experience, key phone talking points, written correspondence, recruitment ads, font selection, logo design, etc.)? • How are leads nurtured and scored for sales readiness? • How and when are leads transitioned from marketing to sales and what is the agreed-upon level of qualification necessary for that hand-off? • How can sales regularly communicate its marketing needs (e.g., collateral, presentation materials, etc.) to the marketing department? • What shared/complimentary metrics can be established to ensure alignment between sales and marketing? • How do initiatives in public relations, business development, and advertising affect the sales organization and how do sales professionals get informed about them? Establishing Key Performance Indicators – Goal Setting and Quota Assignment In order to measure your sales success, you need measurable goals; specific targets you and your team can shoot for. These key performance indicators (KPIs) define sales activity goals and quota targets. It requires reviewing historic data, analyzing trends, and drawing intelligent conclusions. If you are developing a sales plan for a new division or a company with no historic data, you have to make your best guess. In either situation, it is important to recognize the value of tracking KPIs 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 7 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan over time: only by comparing performance against a baseline can you hope to accurately assess the impact of changes in your strategy and how well you are executing that strategy. It is typically easy to identify potential KPIs. The hard part is winnowing down the possibilities to a short-list that can be used to build an executive dashboard. Getting this core set of KPIs right allows senior leadership to have clear insight into the selling process and effectively puts the levers of sales success into their hands. • What is the team revenue or booking goal? • What are the individual revenue or booking goals? • What are the sales activities that enable us to achieve those goals? • What number and size of opportunities do we need to have in each stage of the pipeline to achieve our sales goals (this KPI must factor in conversion rates)? • What is the new customer acquisition goal? • What is the existing customer sales goal? • What other goals should be established? (e.g., multi-year deals, market share, opportunities unseated from competitors, strategic accounts, etc.) • How will we measure, track, and publish KPIs for the sales force? • What KPIs will be published on the executive dashboard? CRM – Pipeline Management and Forecasting Customer relationship management (CRM) has become a vital component of any sales plan. The various CRM solutions available today act as repositories for customer and opportunity information, simplify reporting and forecasting, and help guide sales activities by providing reminders of when follow-up contact should be initiated. Because these systems house the pipeline, they are also a vital management tool, providing both high-level oversight and in-depth insight into the state of sales and opportunity development. As such, a clear strategy on how it will be used to manage customer and opportunity information, well-understood standards for dataentry, and meaningful reporting are all vital to realize the full potential of your CRM investment. • What will be tracked in the CRM system? • How are the sales stages defined and what are the related forecast percentages? • How will leads flow into the CRM system from marketing? • How can we use the CRM to assist the sales effort on a daily basis? • How will we forecast bookings? • What management reports are needed? How will they be used to drive accountability? • How can we leverage the CRM system to deliver information to the sales force that is dependent upon customer variables and/or the sales stage (as noted above, a Sales Enablement best practice)? Sales 2.0 and Other Types of Sales Automation To further empower sales professionals, sales automation has moved beyond CRM and now includes sales information delivery (i.e., Sales Enablement), customer intelligence research, 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 8 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan compensation management, and sales analytics. Many of these solutions are available as plug-in additions to various CRM systems, offering integration of additional functionality into a unified environment. It is important to note that clearly defining your sales process should precede design of a sales automation architecture. In this manner, automation will support your process instead of dictating it (see our blog post, “15 Questions To Ask Before Investing In Sales 2.0” for further discussion of this concept). A regularly updated catalog of Sales 2.0 tools, entitled “Sales Productivity Solutions,” is available as another Sales Productivity Blueprint. • What sales activities lend themselves to automation? • Where does the sales force lose time to non-selling activities that could be mitigated using automation? • How do sales professionals get the customer intelligence they need to engage prospects? • How can salespeople use technology to facilitate communications with customers (e.g., virtual meeting software, online presentations, etc.)? • What other types of automation does the sales force need? • How will other solutions integrate with our CRM system? • What role will mobile solutions play in our automation strategy? • How does the Marketing organization’s automation strategy dovetail with Sales? • What role will social media play in our selling effort? Sales Automation Training and Support How you support your CRM and sales productivity solutions from a technical perspective can make or break your entire sales plan. After choosing the right tools, it is critical that you provide the appropriate training and support for these tools to be properly used and maintained. Your sales automation training and support strategy should be developed in partnership with sales operations, IT, and – if you have one – your training department. • What sort of training is necessary for the CRM system? • What training is required for other sales productivity solutions? • How will sales professionals be trained if they are remote? • How will IT provide help-desk support capabilities that reflect the unique needs of the sales force? • How will mobile solutions be supported? • How will data security be ensured for outbound sales professionals? Talent Recruitment – Attracting and Hiring Top Talent Recruiting and hiring sales professionals is one of the most important duties a sales manager will perform. Unless you anticipate literally zero employee turnover, you will need to maintain a hiring pipeline so that you are not caught flat footed when a valued team member announces that they are leaving. As such, sales position descriptions, recruiting strategies, and hiring practices should be included in any comprehensive sales plan. 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 9 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Sales position descriptions Investing time to craft a well thought out sales position description in advance of needing to hire will pay significant dividends when the time comes to add or backfill sales headcount. It will form the basis of your recruitment advertising, interview sequencing and questions, candidate evaluation, and new-hire on-boarding. As is often said, the devil is in the details, and the details of your sales position descriptions are the building blocks of a successful talent management strategy. • • • What would an ideal candidate look like for each position? o What sales skills should they possess? o What behavioral characteristics should they exhibit? o What qualifications should they have regarding experience or track record? o Does the candidate need to “fit” into a specific sales corporate culture? If so, how do we articulate our culture? How will we describe each position in job postings? o What qualifications do we need to list? o What are the primary responsibilities? All responsibilities? o What type and frequency of travel will be required? o How do we position our corporate culture as one that optimizes sales success so that it is attractive to prospective candidates? What are the specifics of each position? o Compensation, including base salary, commission, management by objective, total compensation at goal, draw, and benefits? o Quota, territory, and reporting relationship? o What will be the goals for the first 90-days? Recruiting strategies Attracting top talent is not easy. There are not many top-producers available to hire and, when they become available, plenty of other smart sales leaders want to hire them. Planning your recruitment strategy will ensure you attract qualified candidates. It will give you the information you need to make informed, objective, and correct hiring decisions. For a discussion of writing compelling recruitment ads, see our blog post on the topic at The Sales Operations Blog. • • • How can we most effectively recruit good candidates? o Why should a top producing sales professional be interested in this position? o Why is the position attractive; what is in it for them? o What is the marketing message we will use to attract top candidates? What is the candidate sourcing strategy? o Where will we advertise openings? o What role will recruiters play? What is the candidate review and selection process? o How are candidates qualified? o What forms, if any, do candidates have to complete? 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 10 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan o How do we use interviewing to identify top candidates?  Phone interview vs. in-person?  How many people interview each candidate?  How do you coordinate interview questions across multiple interviewers?  How do you leverage their different perspectives on them?  Are group interviews ever done? o How are interviews scheduled (e.g., do you schedule multiple per day) and what is the typical length? o Approximately how many candidates are interviewed in order to make one offer? Hiring practices Explicitly mapping out your hiring practices will streamline the candidate to productive employee process. The faster you can hire new sales team members and get them to achieve appropriate levels of productivity, the faster you can achieve your sales goals. • Why would a top-performing candidate want to accept an offer from us? • What is the process and time lag between deciding to make an offer and a candidate receiving an offer? • How to we make offers to desired candidates? o Does one person have ultimate decision-making authority over who gets an offer, or is done by consensus? o Once a candidate is selected, what is the process of checking their background?  Criminal, credit, or drug checks?  Are references checked? If so, how? • What communication is given to declined candidates? Declined resumes? • Why do candidates tend to decline offers they receive? Compensation Strategy This category almost needs no introduction. Compensation is often referred to as the primary means by which you are able to steer the sales force. What’s critical is that you clearly understand how different parts of your compensation plan (i.e., base salary, commission, bonuses, etc.) affect different behaviors. Two principles to keep in mind are pay as close to the point of persuasion as possible and watch out for unintended consequences. • What is the base salary? • What is the variable compensation strategy? Commission? Management by objective? • How can we structure payment of variable compensation so that it rewards success as quickly as possible? • What other incentives or non-monetary rewards will we use to drive sales behavior? • What are the commission eligibility requirements? • How will we compensate new hires? Will there be a recoverable/non-recoverable draw? Will there be a quota ramp? 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 11 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan • What is the compensation strategy of similar positions at other companies? • How might our compensation plan be unintentionally motivating undesirable behaviors? Team Meetings Sales team meetings represent your best opportunity to inform, motivate, reward, and guide your sales professionals. As such, it also represents a critical point at which your top-level sales strategy gets translated into a customer-facing presence in the marketplace. The goal of your sales team meetings should be to ensure that every sales professional leaves with two things: 1) Increased motivation to get out and sell 2) New information/ideas that will help them sell effectively It is important to plan meetings and publish an agenda in advance. This agenda should include pre-meeting action items (e.g., reading that should be done in advance or being prepared to present a recent win/loss) and informational updates (e.g., upcoming promos, new product offerings, etc.) that you will review in the meeting. In addition to allowing you to make much more efficient use of meeting time by figuratively starting on page four or five instead of page one, premeeting action items also increase people’s investment in the meeting before they even arrive. Similarly, making information updates available in advance of a meeting will allow you to advance right to a Q&A session that confirms group comprehension. Sales team meetings are more productive when everyone arrives prepared and knowledgeable; publishing a good agenda in advance makes this possible. • What is the agenda and frequency of sales team meetings? • What informational updates need to be made at meetings? • What informational updates and/or action items can be sent out in advance? • How will we celebrate success at meetings? • How will we share best practices and win/loss analyses? • How will we incorporate training and/or role-playing into meetings? • How will we have team members leave each meeting motivated to sell? • What is the agenda and frequency for sales manager/team member individual meetings? Training Your training strategy is that part of your sales plan that determines how you develop your sales talent and get them all “singing from the same hymnal.” There are three different types of training you need to consider: 1) On-boarding (i.e., new hire training) 2) Continuing education (i.e., ongoing skills development) 3) Sales readiness (i.e., training that is specific to your product offering and focuses heavy on market and competitive positioning) 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 12 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Each of these different types of trainings deal with different goals you have for your sales organization, as demonstrated by the different questions below. On-boarding • What is targeted the time to productivity (i.e., carrying full quota) for new hires? • What are the primary factors that affect the learning curve and how can training minimize time to productivity? • What is the new-hire training curriculum? • Is there testing and/or some formal completion criteria? Continuing education • How is continuing education managed and by whom? • How are position-specific competencies determined and addressed? • How are team members’ competencies assessed and training needs determined? • What is the right mix of e-learning, facilitator-led, self-study, and peer-to-peer learning? • What are the key learning objectives? Sales readiness • Who will determine the training needs associated with new products/services? • Who will deliver this training? • How will sales and marketing plan and execute sales readiness training? Who will be responsible for what with regard to sales readiness training? • How will we get feedback from salespeople about their sales readiness training experience? • How will we incorporate core sales readiness training initiatives into the continuing education curriculum? General considerations • How will we know participants have learned what they have been taught? • What are our knowledge checkpoints? • How will training be reinforced by first-line sales managers after training concludes (the importance of this one is hard to overestimate)? Summary In summary, sales planning is a process, not an event. There are many interconnected parts and, to some degree, sales planning is analogous to painting a very large bridge; once you’re done, it is time to start again. Developing a sales plan and modifying it over time will keep you focused, prevent non-profitable and time consuming initiatives, and ensure you achieve or exceed your sales goals, quarter after quarter! 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 13 of 14 Elements of a Successful Sales Plan Sales Productivity Architects Sales Productivity Architects is a Greater Boston-based consulting firm that helps technology and related companies improve how they sell. By focusing on both the creative aspects of successful sales - the art of selling - and the benefits of well-designed processes and the latest sales tools - the science of selling – we help CEOs, sales leaders, and sales operations professionals address their sales challenges. Because we continuously look for where our recommendations can have immediate impact, our engagements increase sales quickly; because we rigorously focus on efficiency and scalability, they reduce costs over time. If you're not getting the most out of your sales organization, we encourage you to have a conversation with us regarding how we might help you fine-tune your pitch, process, or automation strategy. You can reach us at 508-709-9579 or by email at [email protected]. About the authors Brian Geery Managing Partner and Principal Sales Management Consultant at Sales Productivity Architects Brian knows what it takes to build world-class sales organizations. Since 1991, his sales, sales management, and sales recruiting expertise has been tapped by CEOs and Sales Executives at over 100 technology or service companies, including: Intel, HP, Forrester Research, Nortel Networks, Thomson Investment Software, Iron Mountain, and Fidelity Investments. As a sales consultant specializing in technology companies, examples of Brian’s guidance include enabling a SaaS company to double its bookings, an internet retailer to win a Best of the Best award, an entertainment technology company to increase per rep productivity by leveraging sales operations, a Software Development Kit company to achieve predictable and consistent revenue growth, an application software company to sell enterprise solutions instead of point solutions, and medical technology company to recruit and retain top producing sales professionals. Before becoming a technology sales consultant, Brian was hitting his numbers for 15 years as a salesperson, sales manager and branch manager at three technology companies. Brian’s strategies for sales success have appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Selling Power magazine. Brian has appeared on radio and television and has been a featured speaker at business conferences throughout the country including Inc. World and MIT. Brian is former founder and president of the Sales and Marketing Toastmasters Association, former vice president of the Sales and Marketing Executives Association, and current Business Development Chair for the New England Technology Sales Executives Association. Thomas Barrieau Managing Partner and Principal Sales Operations Consultant at Sales Productivity Architects Leveraging a strong technical background and an understanding of sales based on 13 years selling for some of the high tech industry’s most prestigious firms, Tom has developed sales productivity strategies and tools now in use by thousands of sales professionals worldwide. With a track record that includes consistent sales success and the capacity to produce double-digit productivity gains among diverse sales teams, Tom knows what it takes to build scalable, sales growth engines. Tom has held field marketing positions at Apple Computer where he was on the ground floor of the digital video and Internet revolutions, senior sales positions at Compaq Computer where his sales team led the nation in growing their nascent workstation business, worldwide sales operations positions at Hewlett Packard where he led their sales productivity efforts, and an industry analyst position at IDC where he conducted primary research on sales productivity best practices and published widely cited research on selling in a down economy. With the passion and drive of a salesperson, he now brings this expertise to companies looking to achieve breakout growth through the implementation of strategic selling processes and best-in-class operational efficiency. 508-709-9579 — salesproductivityarchitects.com Page 14 of 14