Using Sales Strategies to Relieve Pressures on Your Sales Force

The Aberdeen Group suggests the PACE (Pressures, Actions, Capabilities, Enablers) model help companies define what actions need to be taken to achieve their greatest level success. The PACE Framework is a combination of “strategic actions, organizational capabilities and enabling technologies” that will ultimately lead to improved quality of the leads in the sales pipeline and reduce the amount of research time for sales reps. This, in turn, will help the company to become “Best-in-Class” by helping to identify where and what kinds of sales intelligence tools need to be implemented.

The first part of the PACE Framework is “Pressures.” This is the first step in identifying the need for sales intelligence within a sales team: What is preventing you from hitting your numbers? Aberdeen suggests the “challenging economic climate” and “knowledge of the competitive landscape,” like competitors’ products and their customers. While the downturn in the economy has certainly hurt sales in every market and company, that can’t be changed to give a competitive advantage.

What you CAN do is take action (the second step in the PACE model) to improve is deploy sales intelligence to your sales force to gain a competitive advantage. In this economy, you can’t afford not to utilize these tools. Aberdeen concluded in the 2009 survey that 76% of respondents currently utilize some form of sales intelligence. Not all of those respondents qualify as Best-in-Class, but with the overwhelming majority already on board and the economic disadvantages holding you back, there’s no competition if you don’t at least jump on the train.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107