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Welcome
Build the culture
you need
to hit the goals
you set.
Plan
for
Success
I'm on a mission to help sales professionals reach their highest potential. Through my blog and events, I offer insights and advice on best practices for success in software sales. I also provide guidance on how to build a sales culture of success and help sales teams reach their goals.
I'm an executive leader with more than 23 years of experience in the software and sales industry, and I'm passionate about helping other sales professionals reach their goals. I believe that everyone should have access to the same knowledge and resources that I've cultivated in my career, and I'm dedicated to providing this information.
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Don't forget to head over to Chris Dickhans Blog section.
Christina Dickhans
Tenured executive sales leader in high growth enterprise software, data and technology.
EXECUTIVE LEADER – Global Enterprise Software: SaaS | Cloud | Hybrid
TOP LINE REVENUE GROWTH – Strategic Sales | Enterprise and SME Logos | Action Leader
SALES LEADERSHIP – Aligning Sales Activities with Stages in Buyer’s Journey for Pipeline Velocity
CONSULTATIVE APPROACH – ACV & Bookings Management | Seller Fitness | KPIs |Data Analysis
OPERATING RYTHYM – Short and Long-Term Sales
Experience the power of success from a tenured executive sales leader, specializing in successful contact center transformation, that delivers results.
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EXPERIENCED LEADERSHIP
Managing P&L for many divisions in my career at two global, enterprise software companies:
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Sales and Strategic Sales
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Sales Analysts
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RFx Team
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Sales Demo Operations
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Presales
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Account Managers
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Customer Success Managers
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Operations
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Principal Consultants (Sales and Professional Services)
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Implementation Strategy Team
STRATEGICALLY PLAN FOR SUCCESS
"Build the culture you need to hit the goals you set."
I refer to this quote as a Chris'ism.
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Strategy + Planning = Success
You may get lucky a few times in sales;
but you can't rely on luck.
Start by building a culture of success!
Sales Demands
The are significant demands on a sales leader and managing these demands takes skill and expertise.
Data Insights
Data literacy and market intelligence are essential in making informed decisions and maintaining a competitive edge by prioritizing insights.
Coaching & Mentoring
Coaching, mentoring, and collaboration across the organization empowers the entire business to deliver on success and achieve greater outcomes.
Leadership Expertise
Strategic vision, tech-savvy skills, and transformative leadership qualities build a strong culture of success, trust, and accountability to achieve outstanding results together.
Conflict Management
Strong communication skills and emotional intelligence is imperative to manage and lead through the dynamics of conflict and to navigate with empathy and clarity.
Team Management
Effective team management fosters collaboration, productivity, and a positive work environment by setting clear goals and facilitating open communication.
Commercial Strategy & Expertise
Cultivate a deep understanding of the market, customer needs from deep research, and the competitive landscape to close business and drive revenue.
Negotiating to Win
Effective communication, building rapport and trust, active listening, authenticity, and ability to find common ground is critical to negotiate for mutually beneficial outcomes.
Board and C Level Management
Drive sustainable revenue growth through customer acquisition and retention, healthy financial metrics like ARR, Rule of 40, customer lifetime value, and responsible risk management.
Talent Acquisition
Strong employer brand that highlights company culture and values, strong competitive compensation and benefits, and a positive candidate experience during recruitment.
Strategic Decision Making Process
What is the MIDAS framework and why is it important to a Sales Leader?
The framework is a process that aids in decision making success done through a cycle of continuous monitoring and adjustments to maintain alignment across an organization.
Exploring MIDAS Framework
Continuous observation and collection of data relevant to org goals, culture, environment.
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Requires tracking KPIs, market trends, and internal processes.​​
Analyze data collected to derive meaningful insights that can be leveraged.
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Identify patterns, understand implications of data, and assess potential impacts on the org.
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Based on insights, decisions are made regarding strategic direction or operational changes.
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Evaluate options, consider risks, and select course of action.
Once a decision is made, implement with specific steps or tasks.
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To achieve desired outcome, focus on execution planning, allocating resources, and ensuring all steps are completed.
Maintain the improvements or change.
Continuously monitor results, make adjustments where needed, and ensure the benefits are sustained over time.
BUILDING SUCCESS
Seller Fitness KPIs
Forecasting Accuracy
Full Funnel
Weighted Funnel (WF)
WF Probability
Pipeline Velocity
CRM Hygiene
Top 10 Direct
Top 10 Partner
Discounting Trends
New Business / Logo
Upsell
Cross Sell
Expansion
Contract Term
By building Seller Fitness KPIs, teams are able to track and measure their progress and probability in meeting short and long term quota goals. This visibility showcases the health of the pipeline; and ultimately the success in meeting the sales goals.
The pipeline tracks the progress of each lead in every stage of the sales cycle in the buyer's journey - from a lead to becoming a customer. Knowing the appropriate initiative, approach, campaign, collateral or event that should be applied at every given stage is imperative to pipeline velocity and hitting goals.
Understanding Seller Fitness KPIs allows sales teams to track their progress in real-time and adjust their forecasts accordingly. By using a combination of forecasting accuracy, sales funnel, and pipeline, sales teams can have a comprehensive view of their performance and ensure they are always achieving their goals.
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Sellers wonder why all the tracking, indicators and charts. Click below for the details.
Accelerating Revenue Growth
SHOCK ALERT:
Gartner states that only 6% of sales leaders say they are extremely confident in their team's ability to meet or exceed revenue growth goals.
Existing Customers
New Customers
Customer Confidence
HOW TO BECOME A SENSE MAKER IN A SEA OF COMPETITION
BUYER'S ENABLEMENT | BUYER'S JOURNEY
What does the buyer's journey look like for an existing customer?
What does the buyer's journey look like for a new customer?
How does your strategy for each of these journeys deliver against your revenue goals?
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DIFFERENTIATORS
Red flag alerts should go off if you have heard your prospects say:
"Your offering looks exactly like what your competitor offers."
"Your information appeared trustworthy but felt contradictory to everything else I've learned."
"It was difficult to decide between the vendors and their capabilities."
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DECISION MAKERS
If you think there are only one or two decision-makers involved in the buying process, you're probably mistaken.
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SALES ORGANIZATION
If you believe that your buyers prefer to interact with a knowledgeable sales representative, be aware that over 50% actually desire a sales experience without a rep.
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STRATEGIC ROADMAP
Do your prospects and existing customers understand what the buyer's journey could look like to ensure their success?
Are the sales stages aligned with a buyer's journey; and that they make sense to your prospects and existing customers?
Have you build in key differentiators along the entire journey?
Do you offer prescriptive advice (what to do, how to do it) for your reps at each stage?
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​Here is an example of building the strategic roadmap of the buyer's journey using best practice "wins" that are fully aligned to the sales cycles that will shape and sharpen buyer CONFIDENCE in the entire sales cycle.
Blurred to illustrate the level of effort while also safeguarding the company's details!
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BUILD A DISTINCTIVE AND DELIBERATE PATH TO DIFFERENTIATE FROM COMPETITORS​
You must guide your customer to evidence​.
There is so much information. Let me help you make sense of it.
Build this information into sales cycles and reinforce within the CRM.
Always prioritize simplicity for your customers over comprehensive detail.
Remember that over 50% of customers don't even want to interact with you so make it easy by simplifying.
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BE A SENSEMAKER
As a sales leader, you must help your reps be a sense maker in every deal. Here are some ideas on how to build the core competency of your reps on sense making approaches to win.
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Reps must strategically curate information to select, organize, present, and teach the customer the unique differentiators.
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Reps must prescriptively guide the customer to the key points within each information source to make it easy to consume the information.
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Reps must lead and offer information to evaluate, rationalize and consume the guidance given.
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Reps must judiciously select information that is critical to buying without overwhelming them in the sales process.
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What is Customer Experience
CX Defined
Hint: It is more than customer service!
How can we anticipate and prevent issues rather than just respond to them?
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In the customer experience industry, there's a prevalent issue which is reducing "CX" to merely the operations of the contact center. While the contact center is undeniably important—often serving as the first point of contact when customers face challenges or have complex needs—it's only one component of the broader customer experience landscape. Conflating CX with the contact center is not just an oversimplification; it's a strategic misstep that can impede business growth.
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Why is this distinction crucial? Customer experience encompasses the entire journey, from initial research on your organization to final purchase, including every interaction in between. It involves website usability, product quality, product enhancement needs, ease of use, reliability, billing, training, customer support, etc.
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Limiting CX to the contact center is akin to outfitting your car with a new set of tires while ignoring a faulty starter — it won’t get you very far. Contact centers are essential for generating valuable customer interaction data and this rich data can be a starting place for data analysis, but it isn’t the full picture. Linking CX solely with contact center activities means merely reacting to issues rather than proactively managing them.
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Comprehensive CX is a strategic, cross-functional approach that proactively addresses customer needs across all touchpoints, well in advance of any direct communication with a contact center.
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To genuinely enhance customer experience, consider the entire customer journey: How can we anticipate and prevent issues rather than just respond to them? If you're committed to transforming CX, it's essential to view it as more than just customer service.
Customer Experience
Commit to a customer first mentality. Customers must come first or they will move their business; which is easier than ever with SaaS. They don't expect perfection but they do expect responsiveness and accountability. Every organization must strive to provide the best customer experience at every stage of the relationship.
Agent Experience
If you commit to a customer first mentality, you are headed in the right direction. If you meet the customer where they are in expectations, you will find that you are most effective in keeping your agents happy. Giving customers a consistent experience will also offer your agents consistency.
Transformation
Digital transformation is a revolutionary and innovative process for organizations to transform their business by leveraging digital technology. It enables automation of processes and optimization of customer experience. It offers a business to remain competitive in today's digital world.
Data Governance
Data Governance provides a framework for creating and maintaining policies, processes, and procedures for data management across an organization. Data Governance can provide organizations with greater insight into their data and the ability to make more informed decisions in real or near-real time.
Innovation
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) empowers businesses to innovate and change with technology and/or software as the enabler and a structured process for implementing and using the innovation. There must be a commitment from all levels of the organization to the change and collaboration needed for success.
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SaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS
Staying with CCaaS and SaaS for this discussion, COVID provided a huge boost in demand for this market.  SaaS and CCaaS companies changed the game leaving on-premise software companies in the dust by offfering cloud-based options with flexibility and agility to manage their contact centers. With SaaS and CCaaS, Contact Centers were able to adjust to remote workforce, and change or spin up new centers in days rather than months. ​A true CCaaS platform allows all touch points to be streamlined into a single platform.  This includes all the digital channels that customers want and need to interact with Contact Centers such as email, chat, text (SMS), social media, etc. ​CCaaS enables a more personalized customer experience, offers real-time omnichannel communication and improves agent efficiency and effectiveness measures. Typically CCaaS has products such as ACD, CTI, IVR, Queuing, Routing, Call Recording, Analytics, ML/AI, Workforce Planning, Omni Channel Capabilities, Reporting and Business Inteligence. ​Often CCaaS companies partner with SaaS companies to bring in functionality that doesn't already exist in their CCaaS platform.   This might happen, for example, through an OEM agreement or a defined partnership.  ​Services such as custom integration, API (app programming interface), implementation, training and consulting may be added to streamline and/or minimize the touch points. ​The ROI (return on investment) is typically discussed in terms of flexibility in budgeting, accessibility, enhanced functionality, continuous deployment, scalabilty, reduced cost of infrastructure and associated headcount, etc. ​As more and more companies look to CCaaS and SaaS options, it is more important than ever to proactively address concerns such as consumer trust, data protection, storage, security, and fraud.  ​It is also important to mention that with any "as a service" platform, your clients expect that you look at customer experience across their entire lifecycle. It is easier than ever for clients to change their vendor to another cloud-based option.