Sales Capability Framework

What are Sales Capabilities?

Sales capabilities are the combined skills, strategies, knowledge, and resources that sellers use to succeed in their roles. These capabilities are essential for achieving sales targets, building customer relationships, and driving revenue.

Sales capabilities can be improved through training, experience, and ongoing professional development. To stay competitive in their markets, successful sales organizations develop a sales capability framework to identify what excellence looks like for various sales roles — and which sales capabilities should be developed to drive the most impact.

Richardson's Sales Capability Framework

Richardson’s Sales Capability Framework is a complete collection of 16 sales capabilities supported by 58 sales behaviors that sellers must master to enhance their commercial selling competitiveness.

Click on the interactive graphic below to take a deeper dive into the capabilities and behaviors we help our customers build.

Building Selling Capabilities that Win

The Sales Capability Framework builds competencies that enable your sellers to perform effectively in their roles to achieve strategic business goals. The Sales Capability Framework is brought to life through our NEW Accelerate Sales Performance System, a comprehensive sales capability-building solution that brings clarity to the most critical skill gaps you need to address to move your business metrics.

Each capability is underpinned by specific selling behaviors that map to modular, high-impact digital learning assets. Personal learning recommendations are delivered based on real-time performance metrics and capability assessments. Sellers experience both digital and live training experiences and can access content across multiple formats including video-based modules, knowledge checks, assessments, and real-world practice scenarios to deliver optimum outcomes.

Richardson’s Sales Capability Framework is rooted in best practices from Richardson’s deep, broad, and proven curriculum that has been curated over 45 years, is science-backed, and isolates the skills needed to improve results and reduce the duration of the sales cycle. It ensures sellers are successful in the following key areas:

• Sales Methods - the capabilities sellers must employ to execute your sales standards, guidelines, and methodology
• Sales Motions - the capabilities sellers must employ to execute the sales process in creating, capturing, and growing business
• Sales Meetings - the capabilities sellers must employ to effectively engage their buyers

Check out the video below to learn more about the framework.

Learn More by Downloading the Capability Framework Brochure Here

Sales Methods

These capabilities enable sellers to effectively achieve your organization's sales standards and execute an agile sales methodology.

Capabilities to Achieve Selling Standards

These capabilities ensure sellers can follow the organization's processes and guidelines, and appropriately use tools to ensure consistent, ethical conduct and effective communication. Building skills to ensure your team is achieving selling standards requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Forecast Accurately: Creating accurate sales forecasts as required by the business
• Leverage RevTech Stack: Using the organization's sales tools and platforms to advance opportunities and report progress
• Manage a Pipeline: Organizing, monitoring, and optimizing the flow of opportunities through the stages of the sales process
• Manage Tenders/RFPs: Participating in a formal or regulated bidding process for opportunities

Capabilities to Execute an Agile Sales Methodology

These capabilities enable sellers to drive customer satisfaction and sales success by blending human insight and technology to guide customers through an informed decision-making process. Building skills to ensure your team can execute an agile sales methodology requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Drive Consensus: Aligning stakeholders on a common course of action
• Drive the Digitally-led Sale: Blending human and technology actions to understand and enrich the customer's digital research with fresh insights that add value through the remainder of the buying journey.
• Manage Complex Deals: Following a repeatable, objective process to assess opportunity progress and plan action to increase win-odds
• Proactively Mitigate Risk: Proactively identifying and managing uncertainties that can impact sales outcomes throughout the pursuit.
• Qualify Opportunities: Determining if the customer is a good fit for the proposed product or service.

Capabilities to Manage Channel Partners

These capabilities help sellers successfully implement partner growth plans and continuously improve outcomes. Building skills to ensure your team can effectively manage channel partners requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Recruit Channel Partners: Building and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships with channel partners
• Cocreate a Partner Plan: Building and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships with channel partners
• Execute and Optimize: Building and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships with channel partners.
• Focus on Growth: Building and maintaining strong, mutually beneficial relationships with channel partners.

Sales Motions

These capabilities enable sellers to execute the sales process in creating, capturing, and growing business.

Capabilities to Create Business

Building skills to ensure your team can earn opportunities for new business requires market knowledge, prospecting efficiency, and prospecting effectiveness which requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Build Customer Acumen: Mapping the flow of pain through a customer organization and identifying where you can create value
• Identify Customer Insights: Analyzing customer industry issues and developing insights to create customer value
• Ask for Referrals: Leveraging success to find leads
• Create Compelling Prospect Messaging: Creating value or pain-themed messages that resonate with targeted prospects
• Gain First Meetings: Gaining meetings with prospects to create opportunities
• Leverage Social Media: Leveraging social media platforms to connect with potential clients, share insights, and build a professional online presence
• Analyze Prospecting Data: Using data to analyze the effectiveness of prospecting activities
• Execute a Multi-touch Prospecting Plan: Developing and executing a prospecting plan
• Optimize Territory Coverage: Dividing a target market into defined areas to optimize customer coverage and enhance revenue opportunities
• Target Ideal Prospects: Identifying potential customers who fit certain criteria.

Capabilities to Capture Business

Building skills to ensure your team can win new business requires the ability to discover buyers' needs, demonstrate value differentiation, effectively execute solution creation and solution positioning, and engage in win-win negotiation conversations which requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Diagnose Pain Using Insights: Diagnosing and quantifying pain, aligning on capabilities needed, and quantifying potential customer value
• Find Power: Uncovering decision-related information, and identifying which stakeholders represent power
• Understand Needs: Asking a broad range of questions and drilling down to deeply understand customer needs
• Assess Competitive Position: Assessing competitive position and planning action to increase win-odds
• Sell with Ethics: Creating a practice of ethical selling and fostering trust with customers
• Sell with Value: Incorporating value into every step of the customer buying journey
• Know the Product: Maintaining a deep understanding of the products and services offered to customers
• Tailor Differentiated Solution: Tailoring products or services to meet the unique needs of each customer
• Persuade with Stories: Using stories to convey memorable sales messages
• Recommend the Solution: Describing how the product or service brings value and meets customer needs
• Prepare Negotiation Strategy: Preparing strategy and tactics for negotiating terms with a customer or prospect
• Control the Negotiation: Effectively responding to customer demands to preserve terms and avoid trading too soon
• Proactively Assert Opening Terms: Leading and controlling the opening exchange in a negotiation
• Trade with Purpose: Protecting your interests without making unilateral concessions that could leave money or value on the table
• Close the Negotiation: Concluding the negotiation meeting with a common understanding of agreements

Capabilities to Grow Business

Building skills to ensure your team can grow business with existing customers requires sellers to execute a full strategic account growth plan which requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Assess Customer Relationship: Considering the current level of the relationship and the customer's business strategy to identify ways to strengthen and grow the relationship
• Develop Strategic Account Plans: Creating a strategy and the ensuing actions to acquire, grow, or keep a customer
• Identify White Space: Finding and prioritizing potential opportunities at an existing customer
• Cross Sell & Upsell: Establishing and meeting customer needs for additional or higher spec products

Sales Meetings

These capabilities enable sellers to engage with their buyers effectively.

Capabilities for Sales Meeting Execution

Building skills to ensure your team can execute during sales meetings requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Prepare for Sales Meetings: Preparing for customer calls to advance the sale
• Open Sales Meetings: Taking ownership and setting the tone and focus for the sales meeting
• Sell with Teams: Leading a selling team to successfully execute high-stakes customer meetings
• Close Sales Meetings: Closing each sales meeting with commitment

Capabilities to Demonstrate Conversational Agility

Building skills to ensure your team can demonstrate conversational agility requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Authentically Question and Actively Listen: Using questioning and listening to foster openness and uncover valuable information needed to drive better outcomes for customers and sellers
• Position Persuasively and Check for Feedback: Tailoring messaging to be easy to follow and persuasive, and eliciting feedback to inform the next move
• Project Presence and Relate to Connect: Projecting confidence, establishing credibility, and fostering a connection and trust

Capabilities Manage High-Stakes Conversations

Building skills to ensure your team can manage high-stakes conversations requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Address Misalignments: Aligning stakeholders by understanding and resolving areas of misalignment
• Assert a Point of View: Sharing a clear and compelling point of view in a way that creates openness and reframes the customer's thinking
• Navigate Challenging Conversations: Leading challenging discussions with prospects, customers, or colleagues about sensitive subjects
• Position a Price Increase: Leading a meeting to introduce a new pricing structure to a customer
• Resolve Objections: Understanding and resolving objections or concerns raised by prospects or customers

Capabilities for Stakeholder Management

Building skills to ensure your team can manage and sell to multiple stakeholders requires training to develop the following behaviors:

• Analyze Stakeholders: Analyzing stakeholder alignment with the solution and creating an action plan to increase win-odds
• Access Power: Gaining access to the stakeholders that represent power
• Engage Executive Decision Makers: Engaging with and influencing executives to create strategic relationships
• Align Stakeholders on Vision: Aligning stakeholders on a collective vision to address their different interests and needs

Sales Capability Development with Richardson

Success in sales comes from building a team that can confidently execute each of these capabilities to better navigate an increasingly complex buying process.

Each capability discussed above links to a specific part of the selling process and the metrics that measure success at that phase. With the Accelerate Sales Performance System sales professionals across roles, geographies, and experience levels get data-driven, personalized, modular training recommendations to ensure they learn how, when, and where to exercise each capability to build and maintain momentum to closing.

These efforts culminate in a comprehensive sales capability framework that strategically drives meaningful return on investment now, and in the future.