«Not all success stories can (nor should) be replicated.». This is the reflection of a recent article in Harvard Business Review.

This statement refers to those situations in which a new sales initiative has been successfully implemented and a decision must be made as to whether it is worth investing further in it.

Knowing when to scale up a sales strategy is often what makes the difference between a company increasing its profits or not.

4 factors to consider when deciding whether to invest more in a sales strategy

Here we summarise the 4 questions that, according to Harvard Business Review, you should ask yourself before deciding whether to “scale up” your sales strategy.

1. Alignment of the programme with the company's objectives

The first step sales directors should take is to ask: is the success of the strategy something worth replicating for the company?

In other words, the initial aim is to seek this alignment with the company's overall objectives. There are two perspectives worth bearing in mind:

• Is there an interest in expanding into the customer profile or economic sector in which the new strategy has already been successful?
• Is selling these products or services a priority for the company, or could others be boosted instead?

In this regard, communication is key. It is interesting for senior management to have access to all sales data and statistics on a single platform, so that they can better assess the situation and speed up decision-making.

2. Better use of sales force time

One of the keys to knowing whether to commit to a particular strategy is: does it allow salespeople to make better use of their time?

It should be borne in mind that the aim of the sales force will always be to spend more time dealing with the customer.

For this objective to be met, the key lies in the automation of tasks. Automation reduces the time spent on manual sales forecasting and tracking tasks, allowing salespeople to focus more on customer service. It also reduces errors and is capable of detecting sales opportunities.

So, if scaling up the strategy involves more tasks, it is worth seeing whether it includes the ability to increase - or indeed introduce for the first time - automation.

3. Return on investment

Of course, introducing or scaling up any new strategy involves a financial investment for the company. So we cannot set this question aside: is scaling up the strategy profitable?

It is worth considering that, beyond a specific strategy, optimising the sales process eventually allows for a reduction in costs, as we have seen previously in this blog.

In general, an important part of the process of scaling up the strategy consists of carrying out the necessary business prospecting. In this regard, the famous magazine points out that it is advisable for all statistics to be on a single platform, in order to have a more general view of the impact that the changes would have.

4. Adoption of the programme

An essential question we must ask ourselves when making a decision about a new sales programme is: will management be able to incentivise the adoption of this strategy?

To ensure the success of a new strategy, sales management must have the ability to carry out the necessary training, create a good process of onboarding and, in general, motivate adaptation to change.

To this end, the article highlights the need for sufficient incentives to boost digital adoption in the sales team. This involves:

• Offering tools with the strategy that genuinely make the work easier, without adding complications.
• Encouraging and rewarding team members for contributing new ideas.

In short, the new B2B sales context requires practical digital solutions, which make their work easier and at the same time help them devote more time to the customer and enhance the more human side of sales.

It is very important that a scaling process is carried out correctly, ensuring that teams can adopt this new strategy in a practical way and that it really benefits them.