Shifting market dynamics, evolving corporate strategies, and unpredictable sales attrition mean that commercial and sales leaders need to act quickly and predict when pivots or adjustments are necessary. There are many routes to achieve the revenue goal, including seasonal demand and many other factors.

It’s the primary mission of every organisation to drive revenue and secure sustainable growth. However, many sales and commercial leaders are faced with daily challenges as they try to navigate uncertainties, optimise go-to-market plans, and generate revenue.

Planning can no longer be left as a once-a-year event. Ongoing disruptions around the world have exacerbated the challenges faced by businesses. From supply chain disruptions and rapidly shifting consumer demand to changes in how consumers buy, organisations have faced challenges on all fronts. And, as such, sales leaders need to be able to adapt to changes in a quick and meaningful way, in order to remain competitive. The key to success is the ability to test and validate potential new scenarios, iterate quickly while continuing to execute today’s go-to-market strategy.

To anticipate and react to change, sales leaders often need help predicting the impact of those challenges, the trade-offs between competing investments, and the unintended consequences that may result. A multitude of variables must be evaluated simultaneously and quickly.

In this age of constant market disruption, evolving corporate objectives, and unpredictable seller attrition, the road to revenue can be full of detours.

Regardless of these difficulties, to be successful, sales leaders must build and execute a plan that drives revenue and secures growth by removing friction from the selling process. This includes help drive consistent growth and decrease risks to the pipeline by addressing critical hurdles that prevent sales from generating revenue.

Overcoming the challenges that arise throughout the year requires modelling various outcomes, weighing the pros and cons of resource investments, and predicting unanticipated consequences. Most importantly, it requires keen insight into the levers that drive sales performance and the agility to make strategic pivots when necessary. Sales leaders need strategies for adapting to today’s lightning-fast markets and responding to unexpected scenarios quickly.

Short-term distractions can pull strategy off course

For many companies, a lot of time can be spent focusing on tactical, reactive decision-making to address short-term problems – inadvertently not connecting the impact of those actions to the longer-term strategic initiatives that lead to growth.

Business leaders who lack a holistic view into the drivers of sales performance often struggle with:

• Aligning resources to markets and segments that most reduce sales friction and generate the greatest return on investment.
• Administering unscalable, expensive compensation programs that unwittingly drive the wrong behaviours.
• Managing sales leaders who cannot accurately and repeatedly predict future revenue numbers leading to missed investment opportunities, capacity problems, and shortfalls in revenue goals.

When these challenges go unaddressed, business leaders are left with sellers focused on the wrong opportunities, missed revenue targets, higher customer acquisition costs, and an increase in regrettable attrition – a costly impact on an organisation’s ability to plan for the future effectively.

Charting a course of action to achieve commercial success

Senior leaders require visibility into the drivers of sales performance and the tools needed to develop a connected revenue strategy. Recent global events have demonstrated the importance of understanding the underlying data, at a granular level.

From supply chain disruptions to shifting consumer behaviour, sales leaders should be able to review customers, geographies, SKU’s, price tiers and brands to understand and develop strategies to maximise opportunities. A comprehensive view of the commercial drivers across the enterprise helps keep go-to-market activities aligned and provides your organisation the intelligence and agility to chart the best path to revenue. Having a single line-of-sight into sales performance with end-to-end transparency will help to illuminate opportunities and blind spots.

For further information, including developing a connected revenue strategy, download our sales performance management guide