Business Acumen - how do we get this back?

Business acumen is vital for your business. But how do we obtain it?

The skillset of the reps at the front end, since the split out or predictable revenue, and still to this day in tech saas, has been entry level.

We only need to learn back into other industry verticals, or simply remember what it was like prior.

Reps at the front end were seasoned veterans with a well honed skills.

Why?

Coming up in the early 2000s.. you first had to prove yourself in CS first. 

Which meant dazzling on the phones 

-Activation 
-Onsell 
-Upsell 
-Opportunity spots. 
-Increasing Contract penetration for 1-2 years for a CHANCE to be a Full Cycle rep. 

What did this give us? 

Complete commercial line of sight. 

We didn’t push up deals that wouldn’t align with CS. 
We didn’t push up deals that wouldn’t pass credit. 
We didn’t push up deals that wouldn’t pass legal. 

This gave you a higher degree of commercial acumen.

This gave you a better business impact brain.

This enabled, far better business case / proposals to be presented.

These are the talent that can speak with your CEO
Talk cost saving analysis with your CFO
Speak to end to end service delivery with your CRO.
This isn't entry level folks.

So what does this look like in everyday business??

Founders with funding ramps, that have never worked in sales or marketing, or CS.

They have the best idea.
They get funding.

They hire SDR, AE, CS.

They dont know the job functions.

They rely on the machine, everyone just looks at each other and points in a circle, and all that transpires is a churny mess of no one actually knows what they are doing.

Funding ramp gone.
Reps fired.

Process starts again.

End the madness.

Backwards to go forwards.

Highlight taken from upcoming episode on the B2B playbook with George Coudounaris

#Marketing #Deals #Sales
#ClosedCircuitSelling #Revenue