Lead-to-cash assessment and action plan · Sales leadership
Give your teams more time to sell,
from prospecting to payment.
In four weeks, identify what reduces selling time and receive a costed action plan. Aria listens to your teams. Our partners cross-check their accounts and your data to identify causes, estimate gains and define priorities. We can then support implementation.
4 weeks
From scoping to final presentation
The entire process
From prospecting to payment
Fixed fee
Agreed with the scope at the outset
Implementation
Support to put the plan into practice, if needed
Further reading: sales operations audit.
01 — THE CHALLENGE
Identify what reduces
selling time.
Your CRM measures conversion, sales cycles and payment times. It tells you less about time lost between lead qualification, meeting preparation, operations and billing.
Your teams re-enter the same information, fix incomplete files and chase approvals. These tasks reduce time with customers.
The assessment identifies the causes of bottlenecks and practices that already work, to build a plan that improves the entire lead-to-cash process.
02 — THE PROCESS
Six stages, from prospecting to payment.
The assessment covers the entire lead-to-cash process: sales teams and the functions they depend on. It identifies bottlenecks between departments, their effects on revenue and possible actions.
Further reading: lead qualification.
Lead
Meeting
Contract
Cash
1
Lead qualification
When leads arrive poorly qualified, salespeople repeat the screening. We measure this workload and the selling time a flow of qualified appointments could free up.
2
Sales commitments and delivery capacity
A salesperson may promise a deadline based on theoretical production capacity. Operations must then deliver it. We identify information missing at the point of sale and the delays it causes.
3
Variable pay
Variable pay can depend on results outside the salesperson’s control. We distinguish individual actions from organisational factors and assess the effects on engagement.
4
The customer relationship after signing
After signing, several departments share the customer relationship. We identify where information is lost, who retains the full picture and which handovers need improvement.
5
Preparing proposals
A complex quote or decisive demonstration may depend on one person. We identify these dependencies, their effects on sales and the skills to pass on.
6
From quote to cash
Between quote and payment, approvals, rework and billing can hold up revenue. We locate the delays and estimate their cost.
03 — IN PRACTICE
What an executive team discovers
in four weeks.
Three anonymised situations from our assessments. Sectors and figures have been changed; the underlying mechanisms are faithfully represented.
Strategic deals were sent last
Each increase in deal value added another internal approval level to the quote. The more important the deal, the longer the response took. The most strategic proposals went out last, sometimes too late.
A decisive demonstration depended on one person
At a technical services provider, a demonstration under real operating conditions won the deal, but depended on one person. The assessment showed how to make this critical step reliable and transfer the expertise.
Revenue was waiting for the invoice
In a service business, some revenue was blocked before billing even began. Faster collections would not have solved it. The assessment located the bottleneck between quote and invoice, then measured the time lost.
04 — YOUR ACTION PLAN
Your plan to free up
selling time.
Your plan links bottlenecks to their causes and cost. It sets out actions to launch, practices to preserve and decisions for leadership.
Further reading: sales performance.
01
Where to free up selling time
Tasks to reduce, handovers to fix and estimated selling time to recover.
02
Which bottlenecks to address first
Causes of delays and rework, teams involved and estimated cost of each bottleneck.
03
How to get started
Prioritised actions with a launch sequence, owners, required resources and results indicators.
05 — OUR APPROACH
Four weeks.
Input from across the entire process.
We invite salespeople and every function involved before or after the sale. The assessment covers the entire agreed scope.
Week 01
Scope
Together, we define the activities to cover from prospecting to payment, the decisions to prepare, owners and useful data.
Week 02
Listen
Everyone within scope is invited to an individual, confidential interview with Aria. Teams describe bottlenecks, useful practices and proposed improvements. Participation has exceeded 85% on every engagement.
Week 03
Analyse
Our partners cross-check accounts and data to identify the causes of bottlenecks. They quantify the effects on selling and service time.
Week 04
Decide
We present the plan to leadership: priorities, launch sequence, owners and required resources. You decide which actions to launch and what support you need.
06 — WHO IT IS FOR
Four leadership teams, one shared action plan.
Sales leadership
Identify selling time to recover and actions to take with other departments.
Executive leadership
Choose actions and resources to improve performance across the lead-to-cash process.
Growth leadership
Find where prospects are lost between acquisition, qualification and signing.
Marketing leadership
Work with sales to identify useful leads, qualification gaps and improvements to make.
07 — FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What leaders ask us.
Will teams feel they are being checked up on?
Will teams feel they are being checked up on?
Interviews are individual, confidential and anonymous. Leadership and managers cannot access individual responses. Findings concern processes, tools and work across departments. They also identify organisational strengths to preserve.
Our salespeople will not have time.
Our salespeople will not have time.
Allow around thirty minutes per person, with no travel. We agree the schedule during scoping around teams’ activities. Participation has exceeded 85% on every engagement; your engagement’s rate is included in the findings.
We already know what our problems are.
We already know what our problems are.
The assessment shows how difficulties accumulate across departments, what they cost and where to start. It can confirm a priority or reveal that a less visible bottleneck has greater effects.
Our CRM already measures sales activity.
Our CRM already measures sales activity.
The CRM measures recorded activity. It rarely shows duplicate entry, follow-ups outside the tool or files stuck between systems. Interviews explain this lost time and complement your sales data.