This is the time of year sales leader are reflecting on this years performance and setting new annual goals. Whether you make detailed sales plans or tend towards goals that fit on a napkin, make sure to include the following hot topics in your thinking for 2010 sales goals.

1. Besides the economy, how did your market/customer base change in 2010?
2. What worked this year, what do you need to do differently next year?
3. Do your goals reflect a “survival the downturn” mindset or are you visioning real success?
4. What kind of staff do you need to win in 2011 and do you have the right team in place?
5. Will your comp plans motivate reps in light of any new pricing models and offerings?
6. What programs will generate more referrals and make your customers love you even more?
7. What are your top ten target customers/segments/territories that you will win in 2011?
8. What selling systems, processes and infrastructure will make your team more successful?
9. Beyond revenue, what metrics will lead to necessary “in-flight” adjustments?
10. What will you do in 2011 to create a culture of success and be a more inspiring leader?

We answered this question on LinkedIn
What are the key strengths/skills to look for in a great enterprise salesperson; someone who can swing $100,000+ deals?

Peak Response: Great question. Every company will have a slightly different set of requirements based on the unique selling environment, company culture, and whether this is an Account Manager (farmer) or Account Exec (hunter) role, but generally for an enterprise rep doing large deals ($10k deals are C-suite these days), we would normally see the following criteria, broken into three groups:

1. Skills – Selling to C-suite, solution sales, ability to sell to multiple stakeholders, selling against P/L, negotiating, presenting, closing

2. Experience – Complex sales, solution sales and lots of C-suite sales experience (generally a lot of experience proving the skills mentioned in point #1). Domain experience is nice to have but usually not critical.

3. DNA – Ambitious, resilient, persistent, competitive (for a hunter role). Relationship oriented, organized, confident (for a farmer role). Goal oriented, optimistic, smart, value added mindset and curious (for both).

We didn’t include other skills such as prospecting, cold calling, listening as these are either a given for sales roles, or are not desirable (ie. most companies would not want their high end enterprise reps prospecting).

You can see the other responses here.
What to look for in a great enterprise sales person…

Many companies can’t resist the temptation to hire a group of inexpensive junior resources to pound the phones and generate more sales at a lower cost of sales, but the results are too often disappointing for a variety of reasons – lack of support from marketing, required tools and processes don’t exist, or the sales simply requires a level of maturity, experience and competence that is beyond the average junior rep, to name a few.
If this has been your experience, you might be wondering what to do next.

More and more, we are seeing B2B companies leverage a three-tier sales model to close both transaction and enterprise level deals. We drew this out on the white board so we could share with you.

Three Tier B2B Enterprise Sales Organization

The sales effort is separated across the team depending on deal size. Often the Major Account Reps are outside or in the field, while the rest of the roles are inside. The pyramid reflects the proportion of different types of reps across the team.
The key to making this work is to provide a lot of structure, process and support, particularly at the junior levels, so all pieces work well together.