Sales Performance Accelerator: Advisor Sales Guide
Use this guide to identify potential customers, start conversations, run discovery, position Goalster, and move an opportunity toward an initial pilot.
The objective is not to sell the entire Goalster platform in the first conversation.
The objective is to identify a meaningful performance problem, understand what is causing it, and determine whether a focused 90-day engagement could help solve it.
1. Start Here
Before beginning outreach, make sure you understand the Sales Performance Accelerator and how it helps a sales organization.
Watch the Sales Performance Accelerator Overview Video
The Sales Performance Accelerator helps sales leaders turn the activities, behaviors, and best practices that drive performance into consistent execution across their team.
Goalster provides the structure around that execution through:
Clear goals and expected outcomes
Weekly actions and priorities
Performance scorecards
Relevant training and resources
Coaching and support
Manager visibility
Accountability and follow-through
The goal is simple:
Make the things that drive performance happen more consistently across more of the team.
2. Know the Problem You Are Looking For
Do not begin by looking for companies that might want Goalster.
Look for leaders who have a performance problem Goalster can help solve.
Good opportunities often include teams where:
Performance varies significantly between people
Best practices are understood but inconsistently followed
Some reps perform extremely well while others struggle
Managers spend significant time chasing execution
Training is delivered but does not consistently translate into behavior
Leaders lack visibility into what people are actually doing between performance reviews
New hires take too long to become productive
Sales fundamentals are not being executed consistently
Leaders are under pressure to improve productivity, revenue, quota attainment, or conversion
The organization knows what needs to happen but struggles to make it happen consistently
You are looking for the gap between:
What people should be doing and what they are actually doing consistently.
That's the opportunity.
3. Identify the Right People
Focus your outreach on people who own sales performance or are accountable for improving it.
Typical contacts include:
Chief Revenue Officer
VP of Sales
Head of Sales
Regional Vice President
Sales Director
Business Unit Leader
Sales Enablement Leader
Learning and Development Leader
Sales Operations Leader
Where possible, look for a specific reason why performance improvement may be important now.
Useful triggers where Goalster could easily be introduced include:
A new quarter or fiscal year
Missing sales targets
A new sales leader
A reorganization
New products or services
New sales methodology
Rapid hiring of new team members
Poor new-hire ramp
Increasing pressure on productivity
Significant performance variance
New strategic priorities
A major training initiative
Changes in compensation or performance expectations
A clear business trigger makes the conversation much easier.
4. Connect on LinkedIn
Your first objective is simply to connect.
Do not send a long pitch in the connection request.
Keep it simple and relevant.
"Hi John, thanks for connecting. We're both focused on improving performance and execution, so I thought it'd be great to connect."
Once they accept, quickly thank them for taking the time and begin a conversation around the problem rather than immediately explaining Goalster.
"Thanks for connecting, John. I appreciate you taking the time. I had a quick question if you had a second."
5. Start the Conversation
Use a question that allows the sales leader to talk about their team.
Choose the question that best fits the person or situation.
Performance Consistency
"When you look across your sales team, what tends to separate the people consistently performing at the top from everyone else? Capability, experience, or maybe executing the fundamentals more consistently?"
Performance Variance
"How much variance do you see between the way your best performers execute and the rest of the team?"
Sales Fundamentals
"When I was at [Company name], we saw consistency as being the biggest lever of improvement. Do you think the bigger challenge for most sales teams is knowing what to do or consistently doing the things they already know drive performance?"
Manager Visibility
"I was curious how easily can your managers see whether the activities that actually drive performance are happening consistently every week? This was something I saw in my time at [Company name] and I wondered if it was similar for you."
Training Effectiveness
When you invest in sales training, what happens afterward to make sure it actually becomes standard practice?
The purpose of these questions is not to lead directly into a pitch.
The purpose is to start a useful conversation about performance.
6. Continue the Conversation
If the person responds, stay with the problem.
Do not immediately explain or even mention Goalster.
Ask another question.
For example:
Where do you think the biggest gap still exists?
Or:
Is that pretty consistent across the team, or do you still see a fairly wide performance curve?
Or:
What do your managers currently do to make sure those behaviors actually happen?
Or:
How much visibility do you have into that before the performance number shows up?
The more clearly the person describes the problem, the easier it becomes to determine whether Goalster can help.
7. Move to a Discovery Conversation
Once there is a meaningful problem worth discussing, suggest a short conversation.
Keep the invitation simple.
"That's exactly the kind of performance challenge I've been working around. It would probably be easier to compare notes for 20 or 30 minutes than go back and forth here. Happy to show you what we're doing and get your take on it."
The objective is to secure a discovery conversation.
You are not trying to sell Goalster through LinkedIn.
8. Run the Discovery Conversation
Spend the majority of the conversation understanding the customer's situation.
Do not rush into the platform.
Start with the outcomes they are responsible for.
Ask:
What needs to improve?
What are you and the team being asked to accomplish over the next 90 days?
What drives that outcome?
What would your people need to do consistently for that to happen?
What is happening today?
How consistently are those things happening across the team right now?
Where is the variance?
Where do you see the biggest difference between your top performers and the people who are struggling?
What are managers doing?
What are managers currently doing to close that gap?
What visibility exists?
How do you know whether the right activities are happening before you see the result in the numbers?
What has already been tried?
What have you already put in place to improve this?
What is still missing?
Given everything you're already doing, where do you think the gap still exists?
Why does it matter?
What happens if this doesn't improve?
Stay with these questions until the problem is clear.
You should understand:
The outcome they need.
The activities that drive it.
Where execution is breaking down.
What that inconsistency is costing them.
Only then should you begin discussing Goalster.
9. Position Goalster
Position Goalster around the performance problem they have just described.
Use this explanation:
"Goalster helps organizations turn the things they know drive performance into consistent execution.
We take the outcomes you're trying to achieve and build a structured execution plan around them, including the goals, actions, coaching, resources, visibility and accountability required to make those things happen consistently.
The idea isn't to give your team another place to store information or another training program to complete. It's to help make the behaviors and best practices that drive performance become standard practice."
Where relevant, make the distinction clear:
Goalster isn't a project management system designed primarily to report on work after it happens.
It's designed to help people actually execute the work that drives the outcome.
10. Show Goalster in Context
When demonstrating Goalster, do not give a generic platform tour.
Connect what you show directly to the problem the customer described.
If they have inconsistent prospecting, show how prospecting expectations can become weekly actions and scorecard measures.
If managers lack visibility, show how they can see execution across the team.
If training is not sticking, show how content, activities, coaching and accountability can be orchestrated around the behavior being developed.
If performance varies significantly, show how the same key drivers of success can be established across the team while still allowing individual goals and coaching.
Always connect the platform back to:
Their outcome or problem.
Their people.
Their execution gap.
11. Start With a Focused Pilot
Do not make the initial conversation about deploying Goalster across the entire organization.
Identify a contained performance problem that can be addressed quickly.
Examples include:
One sales team
Five to ten sales representatives
A group of underperforming reps
A new-hire cohort
A regional sales team
A new product initiative
A group of frontline managers
A team with significant performance variance
Position the pilot simply:
"Let's identify a group where this matters, agree on the outcomes and behaviors we want to improve over the next 90 days, build the execution plan around them, and measure whether we can improve consistency and performance."
The objective of the pilot is to create measurable evidence that the approach works.
12. Use the Sales Tools
Use the following resources throughout the sales process.
Overview Video
Use this video to quickly introduce the concept or send after an initial conversation.
Sales Performance Brochure
Use this brochure as a simple overview that can be shared with a prospect or internal stakeholder.
Sales Performance Deck
Use this deck during a deeper discovery or solution conversation.
Goalster Platform Overview
Use this overview deck when the prospect needs to understand how the system supports execution.
Pilot Proposal
Use this proposal template once the customer has identified the team, problem and desired outcome.
13. Move the Opportunity Forward
Follow this sequence.
Connect
Identify the right leader and establish the relationship.
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Start a performance conversation
Ask a relevant question about performance, consistency or execution.
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Identify a meaningful problem
Understand where the organization is struggling.
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Schedule discovery
Move from messaging into a 20 to 30-minute conversation.
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Understand the problem deeply
Clarify the outcome, behaviors, execution gaps and business impact.
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Introduce Goalster
Position Goalster specifically around the problem they described.
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Identify a pilot
Choose a team, group or performance problem where Goalster can demonstrate value.
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Build the recommended approach
Define the goals, key drivers, scorecard, support and cadence.
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Present the proposal
Make the decision easy and specific.
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Launch
Configure the Goalster environment, onboard participants and begin execution.
14. Do Not Demo Too Early
One of the easiest mistakes to make is explaining Goalster before the customer has clearly described the problem.
Avoid starting with:
Features
Screenshots
Platform functionality
Long explanations of Goalster
Generic presentations
Instead:
Understand the problem first.
Then show only the parts of Goalster that help solve that problem.
A relevant demonstration is much more powerful than a complete demonstration.
15. Keep the First Sale Simple
Your first Goalster opportunity does not need to be a major enterprise deployment.
A small pilot can establish the relationship, demonstrate value and create the evidence required for expansion.
Look for opportunities where you can say:
Let's start with one team, one group or one performance challenge and prove the impact.
Once the pilot demonstrates value, the conversation can expand to additional teams, leaders, regions or use cases.
16. The Goal
The objective is not simply to sell software.
The objective is to help a customer answer three questions:
What are we trying to achieve?
What needs to happen consistently for us to achieve it?
How do we make sure those things actually happen?
That is where Goalster fits.
We help organizations turn their key drivers of success into consistent execution.
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