I’ve been fielding a lot of questions and calls over the last few weeks – and there’s no question that every Chief Revenue Officer is panicked. Outside of their annual referring revenue (the billings they need to protect from the core), there’s always a gap, and they all have to start at zero every year for the acquisition of new logos or new sales quota attainment, that inevitably, has jumped many times by 20% of compounded growth from the year before.

So, if you’re a Chief Revenue Officer reading this, and you can relate to the above, you’re probably feeling a sense of panic. You have 11 months to go, and you’re wondering ‘now what’? You’ve just finished your sales kickoff, and you can’t afford for your sales people to run the same playbook year after year and expect different results – unless, of course, that playbook is miraculously getting you your 20% compounded growth rate. That’s the definition of insanity.

You need a tactical play that you can use. And this blog will help you think of a very simple play you should begin with. Every one of your sellers needs to stop, step back, and do the following:

Step 1: Map your Total Addressable Market (TAM).

Specifically, your sellers need to isolate accounts with asymmetrical competitive advantages. This means that every seller needs to create a territory plan – hopefully they have been drawing out their TAM as if it was a pie chart. Every seller must take ownership and responsibility, and be able to tell you which accounts have greater opportunity than risk, and which are able to be activated to start a conversation.

Of course, no seller can guarantee that they’ll close the deal – but they can highly influence it, based on triggers. Triggers come in two forms: time and relationships.

We’re going to focus on relationships, specifically your asymmetrical competitive advantage – meaning the advantage is so overwhelming that none of your competitors stand a chance.

Step 2: Show you their Sphere of Influence.

Within their TAM, each seller needs to be able to come to a meeting a couple of weeks later, and show you visually where those relationships are within the key stakeholders of very specific accounts within that TAM – which key stakeholders in those accounts are most apt to change or listen to your story? When you think of relationships as a competitive advantage, the tendency to listen to those stories tends to come from those who have purchased form you in the past, those who are advocates or know your story, or those that are within close proximity to that story. This is called the sphere of influence – and a buyer is six times more likely to purchase a solution they’ve used in the past than to select a new one.

As a Chief Revenue Officer, you’re trying to get everyone to come with a list of accounts that have been mapped – with specific stakeholders that they can call on because there is a relationship with that account, someone that is willing to listen and be a champion.

If you do that one step, sellers will have better visualized their territory, and they’ll have been able to strategically articulate why they’re going to focus the next 11 months on very specific accounts.

You don’t want to wake up in July or August and be behind the 8-ball. This puts your most valuable selling months (Q4) at high risk, to the point where you feel like you’re going to have heart palpitations. You need to be able to feel in a position of power that every seller has thought of their own geographic or vertical, as if they were the CEO of their own territory.

Taking these steps ensures they’re going to focus on the accounts they have greater opportunity with.

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