Sometimes I’m shocked by the amount of time it takes for the “obvious” to become apparent to me.

We just completed a review of 100 of our clients as a means of calibrating our Target Filter and determining the characteristics of our most successful clients. We’re always trying to define our best prospects, not just those with the “potential to buy our services with speed,” (although that’s a very important quality), but those with the “greatest potential to implement our system with success.” The latter is the more important quality for us. It’s the quality on which our brand is built. To pick our prospects for the future, we wanted to use our past clients as our base data.

For the sake of the analysis, we defined successful implementation outcomes for our client as having one or more of these qualities:

1. Landed at least one account that was 10 – 20 times the size of their average account
2. Doubled their rate of sales revenue growth in the 12 month cycle following implementation
3. Grew targeted existing accounts by greater than 40% within six months

From our analysis, the companies that achieved these outcomes by implementing the Hunt Big Sales system exhibit the following characteristics:

• Between $5M and $125M in annual revenue
• Privately held with majority ownership in the CXO positions
• Profitable operations over most recent 3+ year period
• Senior management has been working together for 2+ years
• Company has and implements its Strategic Plan
• CEO/Executive Management invests in professional development

This last quality was UNIVERSAL! (To be clear, I’m not talking about their investment in HBS since that was a given due to the nature of the study.) In every case that we’ve seen remarkable success, this quality was also present.

And it makes sense. Just think, Tiger Woods has 5 coaches; Roger Federer – 4; Shaquille – 3. It seems that the best invest…

The groups that these companies invest in most consistently for development include:

Vistage: The world’s largest CEO and Executive Management development company.

The CEO Project: A remarkable and tailored CEO development program.

YPO: Young President’s Organization.

In addition, they invest in executive coaching, strategic planning, and process development. We also found Lean Manufacturing initiatives, quality systems initiatives and many other efforts to systematically improve the organization’s ability to perform.

Improvement at the highest level of the company is a cultural value, not an event or a “hail Mary pass.”

Our work aligns with their approach to improvement and fits into the belief sets of their people.

The Best Invest.

My appeal to you would be to ask yourself, “How is my company looking at its investment in being the best?” Are you being intentional? Is there a regular review of the areas that need improvement? When you identify these areas do you approach experts to help you through the process of getting better? After all, Tiger Woods can beat almost anyone in golf, yet he has 5 coaches to help him improve, not just a mirror.

So, here’s the obligatory sales pitch: If your company is looking to achieve remarkable results in sales growth through large account selling and have the criteria I listed above, consider coming to Indianapolis on July 30th for my one-day workshop “How to Land Big Sales.” Many of the companies who have had the most explosive growth using our system started with that first step.

I would also encourage you to look into the programs I listed above. They are not cheap—but becoming the best never is. I don’t know what Tiger’s, Roger’s or Shaq’s coaches cost, but I have to believe they used a criteria other than “lowest price” to make their choice on who would help them become world-class athletes. It has been my experience that when getting world-class development, there is a price for value.

I’d like to hear from you—what other programs have you seen that should be added to the list for CEO and Executive Management development?

Ever since i called my marketing partner a “nag” in my post about Twitter a couple weeks ago, she’s been wearing the name around like a badge of honor. I always worry about people who mistake insults as compliments (I kid!), but I guess if you knew her you’d understand.  She lives for this stuff…

So, as these things go, she’s now gone off and created a cartoon character of herself and even given herself an official title within the company (I wish I was kidding). If you didn’t already receive her newsletter this morning (yes, her newsletter), you can find her official announcement below. One good thing I CAN say about her new persona is that it, I mean, she,  will now be doing all of the dirty work that I can’t bear to do myself. Workshop promotions, telling you how great I am, bragging about things that don’t need to be bragged about…that’s all her department now.

So, without further ado, The Marketing Nag has a “very important” announcement to make…

Tom Searcy’s Marketing Nag here. Since I don’t suffer from the humility bug like Tom and the rest of the team, I’ve been promoted to Chief Shameless Officer (CSO) here at Hunt Big Sales. As part of my work as CSO, I’ll be writing you from time to time to tell you about the great stuff we’ve got going on here…or simply to brag about something that would cause Tom to break out in hives at the mere thought of mentioning himself. Where I come from, there’s nothing better than a little self-promotion, but hey, to each his own.

Anyway, enough about me; this month I come bearing news of Tom’s June 25th workshop, aptly titled “How to Land Big Sales.” To those who aren’t familiar with Tom’s workshops, this one-day event contains the same tools that were responsible for $171M in sales for Tom’s clients in Q1 2009 — that’s right, $171 million during the recession — and $2.6 Billion over his career. Seriously, it’s just one day (and not a bad excuse to get out of the office either).

The way I see it, if a loud mouth, know-it-all like me can learn something, so can you. Now, be a dear and check out the How to Land Big Sales workshop. And if you can’t make it on the 25th, no problem: we’ve got a full schedule of workshops into 2010.  Anymore excuses? Try me! I could do this all day…

Now, let’s nag hunt!

— The Marketing Nag
CSO, Hunt Big Sales
marketingnag@huntbigsales.com