Solutions for Investors
The biggest risk factor of non-performance of early-stage companies is their inability to scale the sales execution. And still, investors struggle to mitigate it.
Pipeline of Qualified Targets
Challenge:
Investment managers need an adequate number of qualified targets in order to build a profitable investment portfolio and deliver results.
Reasons:
targets actively looking for investors are often not optimal opportunities;
we don't have the capability for proactive search of optimal targets.
Solution:
build a professional approach for identifying, qualifying and winning optimal targets;
develop a team and enable it for execution of this approach;
in the alternative, outsource the execution for accelerated results.
Pre M&A Sales Due Diligence
Challenge:
M&A Targets can contain hidden risks that can inhibit growth, causing the investment to fall short of the ROE target and investors’ expectations.
Reasons:
current sales results indicate a promising outlook based on a limited number of key accounts;
financial statements do not reveal the company's inability to win new clients in existing markets and in new ones;
the target's management team is unable to manage business development.
Solution:
analyse the existing sales function in light of future plans;
specify risks and their potential impact on performance;
prepare recommendations to restructure the sales function.
Investment Portfolio Performance
Challenge:
Companies with big growth potential fail to achieve projected results, causing a return on equity that is insufficient for the owners. Investment managers may have difficulty delivering expected results.
Reasons:
company management is not aware of the critical role of systematic sales for meeting financial targets;
companies don't have a professional sales function in place;
high value-added offerings require special sales approaches for profitable sales that will fuel growth.
Solution:
management has to recognise that a professional and profitable sales strategy is the key success factor for meeting the business plan’s goals;
a professional sales function has to be put in place that includes creating a competent sales team and executing a well-conceived sales process by using practically effective tools;
company management must be in charge of sales, profitability and forecasting.
Post M&A Sales Alignment
Challenge:
A strategy based on M&A can be negatively impacted by incompatible sales teams. If an optimal integration of sales functions is critical to success, the project can be endangered or can even fail.
Reasons:
sales teams have different cultures, processes and incompatible offerings;
often the sales teams used to be competitors and have negative perceptions of each other;
resistance to change in the sales teams and middle management directly impacts performance.
Solution:
jointly define common offerings, sales messaging and sales process;
manage change adoption by using a proven professional approach based on people buy-in;
establish management by objective that directly supports the M&A’s purpose.
