Many organisations, particularly long-established B2B manufacturers and distributors, are operating with sub-optimal sales processes, putting a limit on their growth and ability to outperform the competition. We’ve seen multiple organisations where salespeople who have developed a good network of customers are stuck managing those relationships, or they lack information about the activities which really matter for converting customers, or sales process are highly manual, tying up resource in quoting, receiving orders and invoicing.
At White Space Strategy, we help clients address these issues by focusing on seven key areas of sales maturity. In this blog, we outline practical steps and real-world examples to help you boost your sales performance.
Assess Your Sales Process Across Seven Key Areas
The first step to sales excellence is to assess your current process. At White Space Strategy, we recommend evaluating maturity across these seven areas:
- Go-to-market strategy and value proposition
- Sales model
- Sales process
- Performance management and incentives
- Culture and skills
- Tools and technology
- Data and analytics
It is important to recognise your strengths as well as identify weaknesses. All businesses will have elements they do very well and other areas they can improve. Perhaps you have a great product that everyone wants, so you’ve never needed to analyse sales performance; or your team have great relationships that keep customers coming back, but you could be doing more to incentivise them to go out and meet new clients.
A structured assessment helps you understand where your strengths and weaknesses lie. You could approach this with a self-assessment, staff surveys, progress tracking over time, benchmarking against other organisations, a third-party review or a combination of these.
Identify Gaps and Weak Points
Once you have assessed your sales process, focus on identifying gaps and weak points. The most common issues we typically see in organisations during our sales assessments include:
- Lack of a differentiated value proposition
- Limited understanding of customer segments
- Inefficient quoting or CRM processes
- Underdeveloped marketing and e-commerce capabilities
- Succession risks within the core team
It may be that overall sales performance has been good, and you’ve been achieving consistent growth, but these weak points may come to hold you back at a different point in the market cycle or could be creating a ceiling on your overall growth. Knowledge of these gaps will allow you to plan for improvements in future and prioritise those that are likely to have the greatest impact on performance.
Example:
In our work with one business, we found that they were receiving invoices for small orders (<£50) via email and fax, rather than through EDI or even a webform. This was creating a huge amount of back-office labour which was tying up inside salespeople and preventing them from engaging with current customers, having a knock-on impact on outside salespeople who were spending much of their time ‘farming’ existing customers. The business was seeing consistent growth, but a little investment in back office processes would unlock significant additional opportunity.
Define Best Practice and Set KPIs
Knowing what best practice looks like in each area is essential. Research industry benchmarks, review case studies, and consult with experts to set realistic goals. Establish clear KPIs to monitor progress and keep your team focused.
Think about how you can incorporate these KPIs into your incentive structure so that salespeople are targeting the right activities.
Common sales KPIs include:
- Win rate
- Sales cycle length
- Average deal size
- Customer retention rate
- Pipeline coverage
Regularly tracking these metrics helps you measure improvement and adjust your strategy as needed.
Example:
By assessing performance in our seven metrics across a range of portfolio businesses, one of our clients was able to identify star performing businesses in each of these areas and share real life examples of best practice across the group.
Use the Right Tools and Technology
Sales tools and technology play a critical role in driving excellence. Invest in platforms that support your sales process, such as CRM systems, analytics dashboards, and sales enablement tools. Ensure your team is trained to use these tools effectively.
Example:
Empowering salespeople to see the data around their customers can help them deploy their time. The best businesses we work with share access to dashboards and inform salespeople of progress against targets through daily automated emails so that data is always easy to access and everyone knows what their next activity should be.
Foster a High-Performance Sales Culture
Sales excellence is not just about process and technology. It also depends on culture and skills. Encourage a culture of continuous improvement, invest in training, encourage collaboration and align incentives with desired behaviours.
- Provide regular feedback and coaching
- Recognise and reward top performers – including in back office sales, not just outside sales
- Promote knowledge sharing across the team
A strong sales culture supports long-term success and helps retain top talent.
Example:
One business we worked with changed an element of their incentive structure every year, to align with strategic business priorities. This could include things like incentivising handing off clients across the team or completing information in the CRM system. Thinking about how you want your team to grow and rewarding effort as well as achievement will develop an engaged sales community rather than competitive silos.
Achieving sales excellence requires more than just hard work—it demands a strategic, structured approach. By assessing your sales maturity across our seven key areas, identifying gaps, defining best practices and leveraging the right tools and culture, you can unlock significant growth potential. At White Space Strategy, we’ve seen firsthand how even small changes can lead to major performance gains. Whether you’re a long-established B2B manufacturer or a growing distributor, now is the time to take a fresh look at your sales process and invest in the improvements that will drive long-term success.
If you need support with sales excellence in your B2B organisation, White Space Strategy is here to help. We specialise in market entry strategy, opportunity identification, competitor analysis, and more.
Get in touch to discuss how we can support your next move.
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