Your company's sales function can make or break its growth

You can't promise year-on-year revenue growth without sales to back it up.

Last year, 86% of executives expected to hit their revenue targets, but 42% fell short, according to a Bain & Company survey.

When I step into businesses on track for this same fate, I dive into the sales function to help steer it back on course. I've found that rolling up your sleeves and getting stuck into the deal pipeline is the best way to ensure that real sales opportunities are being generated and followed through.

Start where deals start, with marketing

That starts where a deal starts: usually with a marketing function producing sales leads. Identifying weak sales and marketing patterns early in the pipeline gives you room to see the trickle-down effects of any improvements you make.

Assess which channels produce the most results, and whether marketing spend is translating into leads for the sales team. If marketing isn't driving new leads, then your pipeline will stay empty no matter how good your salespeople are.

Test the skills of those who close

When you're confident leads are being produced, you can move on to the people who close them – your sales representatives. Salespeople are optimistic by nature, but if they lack the skills to close a deal, then your pipeline will be padded with deals that don't convert.

Are there any gaps in your sales team's training? How do they pursue a lead? When do leads tend to go quiet?

Asking those questions helps you understand how the team gels, if anyone is struggling and how to address any problem areas.

Account managers carry the team's credibility

Further down the pipeline are account managers. As the main point of contact in any lead relationship, they play an important role in the team's capabilities, and any weaknesses here hurt collective credibility.

When deals fall through, you have to put yourself in your prospect's shoes. Are they receiving a clear pitch? Are they getting a fair price? Are their needs being met? Nothing is worse than losing a deal because of a bad proposal.

But if proposals do go well, the next step is to find out what matters to the potential client, from their budget and timeline to the actual products or services they need. Through those conversations, you can establish expectations and align on a collective vision to make sure deals can actually close.

Ground ambition in what's achievable

From my experience, sales and marketing functions are never a cut-and-paste process and the questions you ask look different from company to company. The approach you take tends to work across the board, though.

If you get close to your sales pipeline and see the reality of your revenue, then you can match your ambition accordingly.

It's good to be ambitious about revenue forecasts, but that ambition needs to be grounded in what's achievable. Interrogating your sales function in the first 30 days holds the solution to ensuring those forecasts are realistic.