Series: Sales Mistakes - The Beachhead ⇒

A few months ago I signed up for Provide's Upmarket program, with intention of using it to really kill it at ZE PowerGroup. That plan was thrown into disarray when I was uncerimoniously laid-off; however I still had access to it, so I decided to dig in to prepare myself for my next gig.

As I don't have current opportunities to base it on, I'm going back in time and reviewing past decisions and opportunities, to see what I could have done better. I'm going to publish this as a series of lessons, so you all can hopefully learn from me.

Based on the first module of the Upmarket program, I made a fairly large mistake when I got the EDP sales process in order. Some backstory; when I arrived there, as the first sales exec, there was a loosely defined sales process; but it was not that effective; they took too many unqualified meetings and had very little qualification.

The first changes I made, were correct:

• developed an ICP
• built lead scoring
• stopped demo'ing on the first call
• added qualification questions and scoring

The mistake I made, was to ADD another vertical into the mix. This made it hard for us to grow quickly. Instead we should have stayed focussed on Oil & Gas, and truly built on the beach head. Had I not done this, I would likely still be at EDP.

Sorry Sachin!