How We Help You

We Help CEOs Create Effective Leadership Teams

YOUR LEADERSHIP TEAM MUST HAVE TALENT AND BE ALIGNED TO YOUR STRATEGIES

Nothing is more important to a CEO than the traction, momentum, and velocity that comes from a powerfully aligned, effective, and engaged Leadership Team. Unfortunately, not all Leadership Teams fit that description.

We Evaluate your Leadership Team to learn what impact it has on revenue, identify gaps where crucial roles are not being filled effectively, identify opportunities to work more effectively together, and develop skills your leadership team must have.

Our Key Management Dynamics Assessments were developed from the ground up to be used specifically with a Leadership Team. Learn more about the Key Management Dynamics. 

We Help CEOs Create An Effective Sales Organization

Most companies have already cut every expense that can be cut and the only remaining area where a CEO can improve profitability is by significantly increasing revenue. How? By optimizing the sales force so that the entire team is generating more revenue, more consistently, and at greater margins. The first step toward that goal is to evaluate the sales force. A sales force evaluation answers the most pressing questions you have, including whether the existing people can execute your strategy, the impact of sales management, whether you have the right people in the right roles, whether you’ve been hiring the right people, which of your non performers can become performers, how much better they can become, what it will take to get them there, why their results are the way they are, and much more. Learn more about the Sales Force Evaluation.

Following a sales force evaluation, you’ll want to develop a sales process or optimize the one you have, optimize your sales pipeline, and develop metrics that actually drive revenue. You’ll also want your sales manager(s) developed so that they can have the desired impact on revenue by effectively coaching, motivating and developing their salespeople while holding them accountable to the agreed upon metrics. And when everything else is in place, you’ll want your salespeople to become more effective at overcoming resistance, developing opportunities and closing new business. Learn more about Training.

We Help Sales VPs Significantly Increase Revenue and Get to Breakthrough

Most companies have already cut every expense that can be cut and the only remaining area where a CEO can improve profitability is by significantly increasing revenue. How? By optimizing the sales force so that the entire team is generating more revenue, more consistently, and at greater margins. The first step toward that goal is to evaluate the sales force. A sales force evaluation answers the most pressing questions you have, including whether the existing people can execute your strategy, the impact of sales management, whether you have the right people in the right roles, whether you’ve been hiring the right people, which of your non performers can become performers, how much better they can become, what it will take to get them there, why their results are the way they are, and much more. Learn more about the Sales Force Evaluation.

Following a sales force evaluation, you’ll want to develop a sales process or optimize the one you have, optimize your sales pipeline, and develop metrics that actually drive revenue. You’ll also want your sales manager(s) developed so that they can have the desired impact on revenue by effectively coaching, motivating and developing their salespeople while holding them accountable to the agreed upon metrics. And when everything else is in place, you’ll want your salespeople to become more effective at overcoming resistance, developing opportunities and closing new business. Learn more about Training.

You’ll want to make sure that from this point on, you hire only those salespeople that are extremely likely to succeed at your company, selling to decision makers in your marketplace, with your price points, and against your competition. Learn more about our Recruiting Solutions. And you’ll want to use our legendary Sales Candidate Assessments to aid in the selection process.

In most companies, developing sales managers requires more than training, so we compliment the training with one-on-one coaching to make sure they can take what they learned in training and use it effectively to coach and develop their salespeople. Learn more about Coaching. 

WE HELP HUMAN RESOURCE VPs and CHROs SOLVE THEIR SALES HIRING PROBLEMS  

You are responsible for having the right people in the right seats on the bus and you do it quite well. However, if there is one area where you could be more effective, it would definitely be in the sales department where you just don’t seem to be able to achieve the same results, even though you duplicate the process you use for filling other crucial positions. Sales is different. It requires a different process, different mindset and different tools. That’s where we can help you. Learn more about our Recruiting Solutions and our recruiting tools.

WE HELP NON-PROFIT DIRECTORS AND CHAIRS LEVERAGE THE POWER OF YOUR BOARD

Two of the most difficult aspects of directing a non-profit in today's difficult economy are leveraging your board of directors and generating donations and revenue from services.

The board, especially your executive committee, should be a powerhouse of leaders, who came together for their mutual passion for your cause, to leverage their synergy, experience and ideas to help your organization define and achieve its goals. Unfortunately, it hardly ever works like that. We can help you get your board, executive committee and/or leadership team working much more effectively together by identifying the gaps in leadership styles which, when filled, make the team much more effective. Our Key Management Dynamics Assessment was built from the ground up, not only for the board room, but for the non-profit board room! Learn more about our Key Management Dynamics Assessment.

When it comes to generating revenue, your fund raising group needs to overcome resistance and increased competition for reduced amounts of available funding, and the people selling corporate and consumer services are trying to get money that no longer exists! Although you don't use this word, we do, and it's called selling. We can help you learn more about the capabilities of the people you have in the funding roles and help you develop their effectiveness doing it. If you don't have the right people in those roles, we can help you select people who could have a greater impact on your ability to fulfill the organization's mission.

WE HELP FOUNDERS AND OWNERS TRANSITION AND SCALE

You're an entrepreneur and you may still be in an early stage of your company's development. If so, you need to sell, but you need to sell like an entrepreneur, not like a salesperson. An assessment sheds light on where the selling skill gaps are which, when addressed through training and/or coaching, will accelerate your revenue growth.

You may be making the transition from entrepreneur to executive, in which case you should review either the CEO/President page or the VP Sales page, depending on whether or not you have a Sales VP between you and your sales force.

INDIVIDUAL SALESPERSON 

If you are an individual salesperson, you care about earning more money, becoming more successful and making yourself more marketable. We are here to help. Our training and coaching have helped individual salespeople like you literally double their sales in record time. It all depends on how change ready you are. If you aren't yet ready to abandon the thinking, methods and behaviors that lead to mediocre results, we won't be able to help much. But if you're ready to experience life as a top producer and big-time money earner, we will help you make the changes necessary to achieve your goals. 

SERVICES WE PROVIDE 

ASSESSMENTS 

Sales Candidate Assessments – Our Sales Candidate Assessments are unique and offer unprecedented value. They rely heavily on accurate, reliable, validated and sales specific feedback to help our clients select"A" players for their sales teams.

Sales Force Evaluations - Most of our engagements begin with a Sales Force Evaluation, which provides an in-depth look at our clients' salespeople, their systems, processes and overall strategies. This helps answer the most difficult questions about sales team performance and provides a road map for planning an effective and meaningful program.

In addition to answering tough questions, we can alert you to problems with your current hiring criteria, the quality of your pipeline, the effectiveness of your sales management efforts, and help discover any misalignment with strategy. We can show you if your salespeople are capable of executing your strategies for going forward, how comfortable they are with your model for going to market, and explain why sales opportunities are lost or stalled. We can identify salespeople who can perform more effectively and what you must do in order to help them reach their potential. We can also identify non-performers who can be saved, predict how long it will take, and define the help they will require to become productive. And, if you are attempting to transition your company from "Good to Great," we can help you understand which people should be on your bus, which seats they should be in and which of those team members should be off your bus.

Training

Align Strategic provides results oriented, customized or module-based training for sales, sales management, business development and professional services for companies. Our powerful and entertaining development programs will excite your entire team and substantially increase sales.

We work with your people on an on-going basis. First we provide a solid foundation based on sound theory, and follow up with role-playing, examples, problem-solving, tactics, and strategy. 

While salespeople will receive training on skills, process, strategy and tactics, sales management will receive training on coaching, motivation, recruiting, accountability, pipeline management, leadership and strategy.

SALES PROCESS DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Did you know that 91% of the companies whose sales forces we have evaluated were lacking a formal, structured sales process? For over 25 years, Cheryl Powers and Align Strategic has helped companies optimize their sales process by collecting all of a company's steps, tasks, goals, milestones and to do's, and mapping them onto the Sales Process, assuring that steps happen at the right time, in the right sequence, and for the right reasons. When the entire sales team follows an effective, repeatable process, fewer shortcuts, mistakes and missteps lead to increased sales.  

COACHING 

Clients never have to worry about our sales professionals lacking the expertise to bring them to the next level. Align Strategic offers highly qualified, veteran sales development experts who provide effective, timely coaching to salespeople, managers, sales leaders, and C-Level executives. Our team meets stringent criteria for expertise and we ensure ongoing training of our own team to ensure that our clients get the maximum value for their investment. Our unique coaching personalizes your experience, gets to the root of individual issues, and enhances the overall training experience.

RECRUITING 

Sales Recruiting is one of the toughest tasks within an organization because finding the right people that will not only sell, but who will thrive in your culture is a very tricky feat. We help clients develop a world-class, sales specific recruiting process to identify, attract, filter, interview, select, hire, on-board and retain top sales talent that will succeed in the client's business, with their pricing model, competition and challenges. In some cases, for those clients that prefer to outsource this process, Align Strategic will provide turnkey solutions, handling the entire recruiting process on the client’s behalf.

SALES FORCE ARCHITECTURE

When it comes to sales force architecture, Align Strategic has the tools, data, validation, understanding, track record, and expertise to optimize your sales force. While you may not need to resolve all of the issues that make up sales force architecture, many of them apply to most companies:

Optimization – do we have the right number of salespeople and can we do more with less?

Roles – do we have the right salespeople in the right roles and, if not, what are the best roles for them?

Models – which of our salespeople can make the two most critical sales transitions of the 21st century: account manager to hunter; and presenter to consultative seller? In other words, who will be able to transition from behaving like an account manager to being more proactive and hunt for new opportunities and new business? And who will be able to make the transition from presenting/proposing/quoting to the much more authentic and customer focused consultative selling?

Process – do we currently have an effective sales process or do we need a more formalized, structured, optimized sales process?

Selection Criteria – have we been selecting the right people for our sales organization and, if not, how should our selection criteria change?

Alignment – is our sales leadership/management team aligned on strategy?

Execution – is the current sales force capable of executing our changing strategies?

Sales Management – how effective is our sales management team at coaching, motivating, recruiting, developing and driving accountability? Is their success or lack thereof a result of their people or their sales management skills?

Development – Which of the B's, C’s and D players can step up and become A's and B’s and who can’t be developed? What will it take? How long will it take? How much improvement is possible? What will the ROI be?

Compensation – Is our current compensation plan effective and are our people motivated by it? if not, what must change?

Our pioneering, world-class suite of sales force assessment tools will take the guess work out of the equation and provide answers to all of these questions, along with insights, recommendations and action steps to make the redesign of your sales force as effortless, efficient, cost-effective, and time-saving as possible. 

TRAIN THE TRAINER

If you prefer the economy of scale that a train the trainer program can provide, Align Strategic will work with your trainer and/or training team to help them deliver Breakthrough Performance training throughout your organization. Even trainers experienced with multiple methodologies, systems and processes find that the Breakthrough Performance process and methodology is easy to internalize, adapt and share in companies with diverse audiences, products, services, markets and geographies.