shorter sales cycles, new customers, more business, increased profilts, better cashflow

Addressing the complete sales cycle

There’s many a sales methodology in the market, but most focus only on large deals, and typically only on the skills required at the point of sale completely missing everything that must happen before an opportunity has been identified.

Such sales methodologies fail to assist businesses with their overall sales process and their need to ensure their energies are focused where they will gain maximum return from their sales and marketing budget.

Knowing how to deal with an opportunity is great, but how do you find one in the first place? If all you do is respond to inbound enquiries what control do you have over the pace or direction of the development of your business?

Performative Structured Selling®  provides the foundation for your own go-to-market model. It creates a lean, agile selling engine that addresses the complete selling cycle enabling you to build a manageable customer base from which you can then fill your pipeline with opportunities that you can objectively assess for your chances of winning.  This not only helps the sales force to use their time more effectively, but also enables your sales management to deploy their resources for maximum return.

The Performative Structured Selling® framework permits the flexibility to incorporate the things that are already established and working well within your existing processes, into the final solution.

Performative undertook three assignments for us between 2002 and 2005 including the customisation and deployment of Performative Structured Selling® of which the key principles are still in use today. We have come to realise the true benefit of this robust methodology as it remains a constant in the business regardless of the changes in personnel, market and proposition. The work done by Performative created a great foundation for what is now a very successful business.
May 2009

Want to increase the return from your Sales and Marketing budget? Get in touch with us to discover how you can tune your selling operation and build valued customer relationships.

Developing professional selling and sales management skills for all your customer facing staff

Maintaining productivity in a dynamic Sales Force

Creating and maintaining a sales team with enough good staff to achieve your plans and meet your forecasts can be a problem particularly if you are growing or staff turnover is disproportionately high.

  • Do you foresee growth which will challenge your internal organisation to grow an effective sales force?
  • Is dealing with churn in the sales force distracting from your business goals?
  • Do new recruits resist the switch to selling “your way”?
  • Are you getting payback on budget and time spent training the sales team?

New intake will not be your staff, working your way, unless you develop consistent selling and sales management skills for all your customer facing staff

If Sales isn’t your primary strength our Sales Academy offerings are designed to equip any company to recruit, train and develop a sales force with professional selling and sales management skills.

Drawing on talent from either raw recruits, experienced sales people from other industries, or those who wish to be cross-trained into sales from other disciplines, the service covers the complete sales organisation from basic telesales through to senior account managers, sales managers and directors.

Delivered initially as an outsourced service, you have the option to take the functioning academy model in-house at an appropriate future date or continue to use us to provide the service.

Let experts help you through the minefield of recruiting, inducting/on-boarding and developing your ever evolving sales force. Contact us now to discuss how we can help you!

Developing professional selling and sales management skills for all your customer facing staff

Developing your sales team

Are you getting value from resources spent on training the sales team?

Kevin Young, General Manager EMEA, Skillsoft (April 2011 article “Optimising Staff Training” on www.bcs.org) suggests that for many organisations their training programme delivers little long-term value to the business – simply because employees fail to apply what they’ve learnt in a classroom environment to their daily role, whereas the potential is there for “an individual’s productivity levels to increase by eight per cent if they can apply their training to their role. That equates to 160 hours of additional output, or roughly 20 days per year”.

We wholeheartedly agree with this assessment so we design and deliver sales and sales management training totally in the context of its application, so it is relevant, it sticks, and it delivers ROI.

  • We induct staff to be your staff.
  • We educate your team to sell with ROI in mind, and support them with appropriate tools to help them compete more effectively.
  • We provide education and training programmes covering both processes and selling skills for the full sales cycle.
  • We hone their negotiating skills; with an increase in the numbers of professional buyers, ensuring that your team employs the appropriate techniques and tactics from the very start of the sales cycle, can make the difference between winning or losing.
  • We educate your technical and field staff to be more sales aware; to support your company’s selling activity in all accounts; to help you to leverage more business from existing and new customers.

To enable you to focus on your core skills, we provide the expert assistance necessary to ensure you have the sales team appropriate for taking your business to market.

“The well prepared case studies made the negotiation skills training really come to life and made people stop and think about what they are actually doing. The key to any successful training is; Did they use it and did they gain benefit from it? We certainly did. I am convinced that we successfully negotiated our way through some very tricky issues since and the way we approached them was heavily influenced by the Performative training. “

Contact us to discuss your training needs.

Business growth

Business Growth

Are you an owner manager or business leader, looking to take the next step?

As your business grows, so too the C level team may need to evolve; focusing more on strategy and less on operations, or delegating specific functions. Sometimes, trying to achieve this on your own can be frustrating and risky, requiring a steep learning curve.

In such times of change it can be more cost effective to use external resources to provide the particular skills to successfully design and implement the changes as they are likely to be significantly different to the skills required to maintain the new environment.  An interim appointment is often ideal for these circumstances.

We can work with you and your top team to develop strategic and tactical (sales) plans for:

Growth: providing support, advice and guidance for directors and owners who are dealing with the many problems arising from growing a company in today’s tough business environment.

“Performative has helped us to refocus on our current products and also to look at new markets and we are working as a board far more efficiently.” Director, International Mailing company.

“The work done by Performative created a great foundation for what is now a very successful business.” MD, IT Solutions company.


Succession: If business success has been heavily reliant on your involvement, it is natural to be apprehensive when handing the reins to others so you can devote more energy to the future of the business and coaching your successors, or to freeing you for your next business. We identify the profile of your ideal recruit and shortlist appropriate candidates for your final decision.

“In early 2010 we decided to recruit a Commercial Director to take over the management of the sales and marketing function from me and Performative designed and ran the entire recruitment project. The service provided was excellent as it allowed me to spend more of my time on business, both operationally and strategically, while Performative ran the recruitment project.” MD, IT Parts company.

“Having Performative involved in recruitment of crucial sales appointments gave me peace of mind to leave the UK and build our US operation.” CEO, On-line Education Support company.

Structural Change: drawing on a wealth of practical experience to support you in the preparation and execution of strategy for; new market penetration, acquisitions, mergers, outsourcing, floatation or post-acquisition/merger harmonisation.

“Following the successful completion of a Sales Performance Transformation programme, Performative continued to work with us in support of a plan to effect a management buy-out by existing senior executives. Their wealth of business experience and specific knowledge of the M&A market enabled Performative to provide me with real practical help in finding my way through the minefield of the MBO. In particular it helped me to understand what to expect from the accountants, lawyers and banks, and thus prepare for their processes in funding an MBO. Performative also provided invaluable assistance to the members of the MBO team. Without the support of Performative this would have been a much more difficult exercise peppered with pitfalls.” CEO, Communications company.

Exit: providing expert assistance in preparing your company to make it an attractive proposition for trade sale, divestment or MBI/MBO, enabling you to focus on business as usual and retain business value.

“Performative drove the process throughout, without which support either the business would have suffered or the deal would never have completed. Since completion Performative have continued to support us through the early stages of integration. I am extremely happy with the result they have obtained for us.” MD, Media Agency.

Feel free to contact us for a confidential discussion on achieving your growth plans.

Sales Performance Improvement

When something is not right, the pain points we recognise first and seek to address are often only symptoms.

  • Are the sales team struggling to meet their targets?
       Not unheard of for 1 in 3
  • In the search for new customers are marketing initiatives generating the response you need?
  • Do you find sales training effects are short-lived or negligible?
       Can be as little as 13% retained beyond a few weeks if they can’t practice it
  • Do the new sales people you recruited live up to their promise?
       It can take at least 7 months to get up to speed for the majority of recruits
  • Are you losing more deals to your competitors?

Individual symptoms, addressed in isolation can give short term relief but rarely provide a lasting result.

Performative recognises that while a remedy for the immediate pain is a priority, a holistic approach, diagnosing the root causes of under-performance would enable them to be addressed in the most appropriate sequence to assure sustainable improvement.


So how will it feel once we have completed a programme for you …

  • Customers will be happy and communicative at multiple levels, giving you advance warning of upcoming opportunities.
  • Your senior management will be able to identify and focus on strategic activities.
  • Sales management will have the tools to be in control, avoiding unpleasant surprises.
  • The sales team will be motivated and operating in harmony with the business goals.

arising from …

  • Your proposition, target markets, routes to market and collateral will be consistent and your outbound sales and marketing activities will be sharply focused.
  • You will have a defined end-to-end process from the initial identification of targets through the evolutionary cycle from suspect to prospect and eventually to customer, resulting in more closed deals.
  • Contacts and opportunities with least potential will be weeded out early; sales activity will be focused on contacts with the greatest potential.
  • Your staff will be fully familiar with the process and supporting tools, and understand the methodology sufficiently to immediately adapt to varying scenarios and customer needs.
  • Key customer account and new business activities will be balanced to achieve your business goals.
  • Your pipeline will be a known quantity, providing objective measures of business potential.
  • The pipeline will provide meaningful KPIs giving advance warnings of problems.

“Performative have unquestionably helped us to become better focused and more structured in all aspects of our selling activities. This has enabled us to accelerate the growth of the company with certainty which is a great foundation for planning and investing in our future.  Throughout the period of involvement with Performative we have found them very supportive and responsive and they have provided advice on a diverse range of topics. They are a great partner to have. “

If this is how you’d like your organisation to be, contact us now!

Customer engagement for win-win deals

Customer Engagement

If your customers are slow to make decisions and your pipeline forecast is forever moving, we can help you.

If your sales force are submitting bids with a low uptake so you feel you are just providing free consultancy, we can help you.

Markets are changing and customers have more opportunities for research before they buy, consequently the sales force has different challenges in order to engage with customers. Gaining insight into your Customer’s world and thereby understanding how you can deliver greater value than your competitors can be key to how you approach your target market.

We have helped companies in various sectors re-focus their propositions and markets for greater customer engagement, leading to more new and extension business. This also assisted the sales management to obtain more reliable forecasts.

“Working with Performative greatly improved the quality of engagement with potential customers and our ability to forecast outcomes from those.” MD, Mobile Technology company.

Feel free to call us for a confidential discussion.