Rainmaker dependency
Is one of the biggest bottlenecks for growth in #B2B Megadeals.
When running the sales team at Amex we were highly dependant on 1-2 sales professionals (aka rainmakers) to win in the #megadeals. These few individuals were responsible for over 80% of our annual revenue target. Without them there was no ”rain” only ”drought”.
Due to the complexity of orchestrating these deals the rainmakers could manage max 2-4 deals in parallel. As revenue targets were raised every year we tried to scale by hiring more sales people. Recruiting high performing #rainmakers, even to a strong brand like Amex was incredibly hard. They often failed.
I wish i knew then what i know now 🤷🏻♂️. I would have approached our commercial scaling differently. I would have,
1. Taken away all unnecessary and repetitive tasks from the stars so they can be in the “penalty area” more often.
2. #Scaled the rainmaker stars with targeted messaging, relevant content and martech tactics. This way the stars can handle 10x more megadeals in parallel.
3. Become better at the team play around deal orchestration. For example between sales and marketing. I would have run account review meetings including the marketing team not only with my sales team (which was a mistake I made).
4. Been more disciplined in training the up and coming sales team on deal orchestration (not only negotiations, selling and dialog techniques like challenger sales).
// Bora Brännström
