Phase 2 · Go-to-market and execution
Most sales organisations do not have an effort problem. They have a focus problem: too many conversations with the wrong contacts, cycles that run too long, too few deals closed where the margin is.
Where you have landed. Work with 3connected starts with the position assessment: evidence-based findings on where your company really stands. This page describes one of the three phases that can follow from it.
It is deliberately detailed. If you have read this far, you want to know how the work is done, not whether it is worth reading on.
Who does the work. I lead every engagement myself. Where extra capacity or specialist knowledge is needed, I bring in experienced colleagues, and you will know beforehand who they are and why. When this page says “we”, that is what it means.
If you recognise yourself in one of them, a conversation is worth having.
Then the problem is rarely volume. It is qualification. A sales team that gives every lead the same amount of time loses precisely the deals that matter.
Being technically superior is not a selling point as long as the buyer cannot work out what the difference is worth to them. That is not a product question. It is a question of how you make the case.
Access comes down to preparation, timing and the right person on the phone. Not to yet more trade fairs.
That is what the two formats further down this page are for: interim leadership with responsibility for the number, or support without a leadership mandate.
The question that almost every sales plan stumbles over is this: if we grow, which competitor is the revenue coming from? If you cannot answer that with a company name, you do not have a plan. You have a hope.
Market segments do not buy anything. People buy, in named companies, with a budget and a date. Sales work begins at the point where a segment label becomes a list of forty names.
Any target account list that does not hurt is too long. The most expensive sales effort is the effort that goes into accounts you would never have won anyway.
We do not work in service packages. We follow the path that revenue actually takes. You come in where things are stuck for you, and we stop where your organisation can carry on alone.
Segmentation, positioning against the actual competition, offer and pricing logic, a target account list with names rather than industries, priorities set by likelihood of winning and by margin. Then we translate the business plan into a sales plan that still makes sense when you read it mid-quarter.
National and international market access, building direct and indirect channels, and work on live opportunities together with your team: qualification, making the case against the alternative the buyer really has, preparing negotiations, closing. Hands on the deal, not on a concept paper.
Metrics that tell you something, rather than activity counts: pipeline quality, conversion at each stage, cycle time, margin by segment. We also embed the way of working in the team: playbooks, a qualification guide, a regular review rhythm.
Both are hands-on sales work, close to the deal. What separates them is whether responsibility for the number comes with it. Leave that unclear at the start and it becomes the most expensive difference of all.
Interim sales leadership. Steering, forecast, approvals, with responsibility for the number, usually over three to six months.
One level below that: targeted support where it is needed. On the critical deal, in the key account meeting, in work with individual salespeople.
Scope, duration and terms are agreed case by case. A single critical deal needs something different from a team over several months, and it is billed differently too.
B2B sales since 1986, not in one role throughout but in changing ones. That is why diagnosing a sales organisation usually goes quickly: I have sat in the seat where things are stuck myself.
| Sold in the field | Nixdorf, from 1986 | Sales assistant, then account manager for large industrial customers. New business, account strategies and, from the second year on, training new colleagues. |
| Led a team | Nixdorf, from 1988 | Sales group manager, Business Systems. Responsible for revenue and margin, training the group, international project responsibility. |
| Built a division | Oracle, 1990–1997 | Head of sales for retail, banking, insurance, services and industry. Built a new sales division from scratch, recruited and led the team, developed a new indirect channel. |
| Led across borders | Oracle Europe, from 1995 | Head of sales, New Media, for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, then industry lead for telecommunications in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Integrated an EMEA team into the German organisation. |
| Ran the business as managing director | RealNetworks, 1998–2001 | Founded and built the German subsidiary, responsible for the DACH region, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Sales, marketing, engineering, pre- and post-sales, consulting: recruited and led every function myself, at a time when the business doubled each year. |
| Advised and coached from outside | 3connected, since 2001 | Building and restructuring sales organisations as an outsider, coaching from junior salespeople up to leadership level, and engagements on the buying side, where the same methods could be seen from the other direction. |
These details are taken from my own CV. Certificates and references can be provided on request.
Two engagements from this field, anonymised but concrete. More case studies are under References.
Starting point: A new technical development is ready, but it has no market, no positioning and no customers.
Approach: Market launch from product definition and market research through to winning and signing the first international key accounts.
Starting point: A high-tech manufacturer wants to scale internationally but has no access to the accounts that matter.
Approach: Positioning, international roadshows, negotiating and closing the key account contracts for development and series production.
A sales team that does not deliver is often the symptom, not the cause. The cause then sits one level higher: in the offer, in the pricing logic, or in a strategy that different people in the company understand differently. Start with sales and you fix the wrong thing. In that case the position assessment is the more honest first step.
Neither format replaces an additional salesperson. If you need more hands, you need staff, not experienced support for a limited period.
For a leadership role that has to be filled for good, a permanent hire is the right tool. Interim cover is meant for vacancies, restructuring and launches, not as a lasting arrangement.
Sales that runs without the owner is exactly what a buyer looks for. If a sale might be on the cards one day, it pays to know early what makes the company valuable to a buyer.
One conversation to find out whether one of the two formats fits, or whether the question lies somewhere else.
Book an initial call Back to the position assessment
Prefer to write? info@3connected.de · +49 177 44 99 66 8
