Most businesses are facing turbulent markets, the pressures are greater today than ever before with far more demanding shareholders and even more informed and discerning customers.

Greater competition, and the introduction of new routes to market are forcing many businesses to rethink their strategy, and inject a more commercial outlook, to redefine roles and integrate new technology to support the business.

These challenges require a unique blend of skills not always found within the business, indeed, an interim manager is often described as ‘an all-in-one project manager, consultant, and senior executive working at or near board level.’

LinXs Consulting provides effective in-house interim hands-on management to create or transform business development functions to achieve high performance by working with existing sales and marketing teams or creating dynamic new teams in a start-up environment.

Business development is often defined as ‘the creation of long-term value for an organisation from customers, markets, and relationships’.

Why is business development so critical? It is all about differentiation, why you and not your competition?

LinXs Consulting’s key focus is to enable organisations to improve their business and maximise their growth potential from increased sales efficiency and effectiveness, targeted messaging and increased market presence.

LinXs Consulting combines best practice methodology with creativity to enable our customers to be successful in achieving their goals. Whether you require a review of the entire sales process or only a single area of operation, LinXs Consulting will be able to map current productivity against industry standards and implement sales improvement techniques to achieve better results.

Companies need to be cognisant of what makes their business successful, both internally and externally.

Measurement is critical. Without clear expectations for activity and performance, sales improvement is rarely obtained or sustained.

The correct sales methodology applied effectively provides a Framework of Excellence for improving sales capabilities that drive recruiting and training.

Key staff retention is often overlooked, but it is more cost-effective to keep your best performers than recruit new ones.

Compensation and recognition practices must be aligned to strategy, thereby increasing the potential to maximise revenues and keep sales and marketing teams focused.

Customer retention and new business growth is the ultimate barometer of success. Its focus is indispensable, and everyone must take ownership for their role in adding value and enhancing the customer experience.

LinXs Consulting introduces best practice to provide optimal organisational structure, robust planning and reporting capabilities, and through the introduction of an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution, everything can be linked together to provide greater cohesion, motivation and visibility.

There are multiple routes to market … but have you got the most effective one for your business?

Are you thinking of introducing channel partners to compliment your direct sales team? How will it work, what are the advantages, and how can you ensure that it is successsful?  Or are you looking to refresh and revitalise your existing channel?

LinXs Consulting can enable you to define a balanced channel strategy that compliments and integrates with your current sales operation. You need accurate sizing of the channel, competitive research and analysis, partner profiling, and coverage/competency-gap analysis to establish the best channel to reach your customers.

It is imperative to create a cohesive channel programme which incentivises all the stakeholders to succeed in building, managing and supporting successful partnerships. This includes rebate schemes, deal registration, and the development of channel communication programmes, partner councils, focus groups and partner satisfaction reviews. The delivery of effective sales toolkits, training and support are essential and their success needs to be measured accurately through scorecards.

Statistics show that the vast majority of organisational change initiatives underperform, or even fail to produce their intended value.

Changing corporate and individual behaviour is not easy, and transformations are never achieved when people fail to understand why the change is necessary. It is important to have realistic expectations of the timeframes required to achieve success and have clear goals that are well communicated.

Change is never welcome among sales and business development teams where strong egos can prevail, and an isolated training event will not bring about lasting change.

LinXs Consulting takes a pragmatic role based on years of experience in creating positive change. We understand that by creating a culture of reinforcement, recognition and reward, the behaviour traits required to sustain change are clearly embedded in the business, linking strategy to execution and increasing shareholder value.

The challenge for most sales organisations is adapting to the demands of the educated buyer in today’s fast-moving connected world where information, communication and transparency are all available at the click of a button.

Buyers no longer look to sales professionals to provide information. In fact leading research shows that the average buyer has completed between 60-90 percent of their decision-making process before engaging with a sales professional.

The research also reveals that 98 percent of CEOs never return a cold call, and this is a similar statistic with other senior roles within most UK companies. The old tried and tested methods are not yielding the same results; the move towards social media and other digital online channels is essential to engage with key decision-makers.

Sales and business development teams must adapt their processes, tools and training to find and engage with the right people and build productive networks. Focus, clarity and being selective with meaningful tailored content are all essential for success.

LinXs Consulting provides a unique blend of consulting and training that addresses the challenges being faced by the revenue-generating areas of the business. Our core areas of excellence are focused on sales training, branding and identity, business development, sales management, sales process, marketing, new market entry, direct and channel sales.