The world economy is headed into a recession. Or not. One thing is certain – as a sales or revenue operations organization leader, you must be prepared for any and every possibility. A Bain & Company survey found that even though a strong economy stimulates widespread double-digit growth, a recession separates the weak from the strong. Bain found that among 3,500 enterprises studied, companies that took specific steps to prepare for recession expanded earnings at a rate of 17% CAGR versus 4% for unprepared market laggards.
A sales organization with over 100 individuals is usually broken into teams with a management layer focused on coaching reps and other individual contributors. The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or Sales VP must keep a strategic focus and prepare the salesforce for leaner times. To prepare for a recession, Bain recommends implementing digital tools that refine processes and workflows to boost sales efficiency and productivity. The first order of business is to focus on aligning resources with the market opportunity. Territory management is the heart and soul of sales and has emerged as a critical enabler for maximizing efficiency.
Keep Your Sales Team Productive
Imagine if a decision is made to reduce the sales force by 10% or 20%. Such a change in strategy can throw a sales force into disarray. Which people should be let go? What happens to their accounts? How are territories realigned? With an extensive sales organization with hundreds of reps, sales engineers, support and ops personnel, it would typically take months to hammer out a new territory plan and vet it through multiple levels of approvals. Once the territory plan is set, sales operations begins the arduous and error-prone process of manually updating the CRM, support, lead routing and other operational systems that support revenue operations. In the meantime, the sales force is distracted from selling. Losing a month or a quarter of focused selling effort is often enough to put annual goals out of reach.
The Fullcast territory management software transforms how medium to large sales teams approach territory management. When territory planning and updating RevOps operational systems take weeks or months, it occurs infrequently by practical necessity. When these tasks are auto-assisted and occur with a button push, they can occur continuously. Fullcast enables territories to adapt quickly and easily to changes in the Go-to-Market (GTM) plan. A RevOps-enabled organization using Fullcast performs territory management so seamlessly that managers can keep contingency territory plans loaded and ready. When the order to reduce staff finalizes, territory assignments are modified in short order. While change is sometimes difficult for employees, it is easier for individuals to adjust when decisions are swift, straightforward and based on sound reasoning. The sales team receives its new marching orders and immediately resumes the business of selling.
Nurture in the Right Measure
The requirement to operate with diminished staff demands that the remaining resources execute at their peak level of performance. Balancing and optimizing territories becomes critically important in a downturn because managers look to achieve the highest return possible with a reduced level of investment. The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or manager looking to trim back staff has to make sure that territories are balanced and aligned with strategy. Fullcast provides metrics that can help sales managers refine the ideal customer profile. It can also help territory architects rebalance territories, so that target segments receive the right amount of nurture and attention.
Multiply Your Resources
When you employ the Fullcast Platform, it’s like extending your team. Fullcast interfaces with the CRM, lead routing system, support ticket system and other operational systems that rest upon the foundation of territory assignments. Sales operations are freed from manually executing configuration updates and troubleshooting interfaces. If something isn’t right in territory management, you call one vendor with a holistic view of your territory management systems. It’s like having extra resources for territory management so your sales operations team can focus on higher priority tasks, such as analyzing sales data and supporting field reps.
Face the Unknown with Improved Agility
When uncertainty arises, a business can best prepare by improving business agility – its ability to adapt to a rapidly evolving external environment. Agility is only limited by the speed at which decisions can be made and implemented. Fullcast enables medium to large sales organizations to quickly adapt territories to GTM plan revisions. It speeds up the decision-making process and automates the configuration of operational systems to match new territory assignments. Sales force agility is built from the ground up, starting with automated territory management.
