Get Ready to Sell

Please note that this article originally appeared in Top Sales Magazine September 2020 edition. Digital access can be found here.
The long­-term impact of the pandemic is uncertain.
Hope for a V­-shaped economic recovery, but don’t count on it.
During the 2008­-2009 financial crisis, there were more than 100,000         business bankruptcies in the U.S. alone, and the pandemic’s global impact has been deeper in terms of lost output and unemployment. Your sales and marketing efforts must be more productive.
“Time to market” measures the time to have a product ready to ship. But that’s not revenue and cash. “Time to effectiveness” refers to the ability of your business­ development team to effectively present the product to prospects. This was a growing challenge before the crisis. According to CSO Insights, companies in 2018 reported that time to full productivity for new sales hires was more than 9 months—a big sunk cost. To improve time ­to­ effectiveness,