Creativity is problem solving: That’s the essence of successful selling – no magic formula.

The foremost function of the mind is problem solving; we solve problems with our imagination and imagination is a function of our creative ability. A creative salesperson is a problem-solver.

The basics of the selling process:
• Determine desire
• Present the solution to satisfy desire
• Help the prospect find the right reasons for a favourable decision

Selling is nothing more than an exercise in problem solving. By constantly keeping your imagination and creativity at work, you will develop the best attitude for problem solving. You will build an unending source of ideas. You will become an idea producer and this will be your source of “value add” that will differentiate you from your competitor.

Differentiate Between Activity and Accomplishment
Activity relates to being busy but accomplishment equates to getting meaningful things done. It takes energy to fail. The successful salesperson channels their energy into creative, productive channels leading to pre-defined goals.

Accomplishment is measured by the amount of creativity involved.

And Finally: Value Added Asks:
“What service or benefit can I add to what I give my customer, other than my product?”

Not just service in the sense of speedy delivery, prompt follow-up and personal attention, which are normal adjuncts of any real sale…but a real plus idea, something extra of value to him/her beyond the immediate transaction…that goes beyond the nine dots of your job…

“Value add” through idea giving, is the ingredient that earns you the right to ask for the order, and to expect it!

Today’s News: It’s no secret that I have been on a ”semi-sabbatical” and “semi-vacation” since the beginning of July: That means eight hour days rather than sixteen!

I have used the time wisely, and one thing that I have finally found the time to enjoy, is the twice-weekly Top Sales Experts Masterclasses - I have really learned so much…yes, even at my age!

I am particularly looking forward to this evening’s event with Dr. George Huang - I think you will enjoy it too!

I am getting to know and like George very much. His background is fascinating – you can read more about him here

“How to Attract More and Better Clients through Introductory Sessions (and Get Paid for It!)”

Full details here

There are four personality types or social styles – Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives and Amiables – and all four have their own unique approach to business, their own language and thought processes etc. As a consequence, the very best sales professionals have become adept at recognising which personality they are dealing with and adapt their approach and communication style accordingly.

In every boardroom, you will always find three of the four personality types, occasionally, all four: I have discovered over the years which personality is likely to fill which position on the board, but more on that later.

The Driver:
Let’s begin by looking at the characteristics of the Driver. Drivers are action and goal oriented, need to see results and have a quick reaction time. They are decisive, independent, disciplined, practical, and efficient. They typically use facts and data, speak and act quickly, lean forward, point and make direct eye contact. Their body posture is often rigid and they have controlled facial expressions.

They rarely want to waste time on personal talk or preliminaries and can be perceived by other styles as dominating or harsh and severe in pursuit of a goal. They are comfortable in positions of power and control and they have businesslike offices with certificates and commendations on the wall. In times of stress, drivers may become autocratic.

The Analytical:
Analyticals are concerned with being organised, having all the facts, and being careful before taking action. Their need is to be accurate, to be right. precise, orderly, methodical and conform to standard operating procedures, organisational rules and historical ways of doing things. They typically have a slow reaction time and work more slowly and carefully than Drivers. They are perceived as serious, industrious, persistent, and exacting.

Usually, they are task oriented, use facts and data, and tend to speak slowly. lean back and use their hands frequently. They do not make direct eye contact and control their facial expressions. Others may see them as stuffy, indecisive, critical, picky, and moralistic. They are comfortable in positions in which they can check facts and figures and be sure they are right. They have neat, well organised offices and in times of stress, Analyticals tend to avoid conflict.

The Expressive:
Expressives enjoy involvement, excitement, and interpersonal action. They are sociable, stimulating, and enthusiastic and are good at involving and motivating others. They are also ideas oriented. have little concern for routine, are future oriented and usually they have a quick reaction time. They need to be accepted by others, tend to be spontaneous, outgoing, energetic, and friendly and focused on people rather than on tasks. Typically, they use opinions and stories rather than facts and data. They speak and act quickly; vary vocal inflection, lean forward, and point and make direct eye contact.

They use their hands when talking; have a relaxed body posture and an animated expression. Their feelings often show in their faces and they are perceived by others as excitable, impulsive, undisciplined, dramatic, manipulative, ambitious, overly reactive, and egotistical. They usually have disorganised offices and may have leisure equipment like golf clubs or tennis racquets. Under stressful conditions, Expressives tend to resort to personal attack.

And Finally – The Amiable:
Amiables need co-operation, personal security, and acceptance. They are uncomfortable with and will avoid conflict at all costs. They value personal relationships, helping others and being liked. Some Amiables will sacrifice their own desires to win approval from others. They prefer to work with other people in a team effort, rather than individually and they have an unhurried reaction time and little concern with effecting change. Typically, they are friendly, supportive, respectful, willing, dependable, and agreeable. They are also people-oriented.

They use opinions rather than facts and data, speak slowly, and softly, use more vocal inflection than Drivers or Analyticals. They lean back while talking and do not make direct eye contact; they also have a casual posture and an animated expression. They are perceived by other styles as conforming, unsure, pliable, dependent, and awkward. They have homely offices – family photographs, plants etc. An Amiable’s reaction to stress is to comply with others.

Most people’s first reaction after reading the four profiles is to believe that they fit into more than one category and this is absolutely right. However, everyone has a dominant style and no-one should believe that they fit into more than two because they don’t.

So, which Social Style do the various residents of the boardroom typically have?

Managing Directors/CEOs are typically Drivers, as you might expect.
Finance Directors are usually Analyticals
Sales Directors are nearly always Expressives
Marketing Directors are also Expressives
Technical Directors are almost always Analyticals

And Finally: In Sales
Level 3, Top 5% Achievers, are normally Drivers
Level 2, Sales Professionals, are typically Expressives
Level 1, Emerging salesmen and women are almost always Amiables

It is of course dangerous to generalise and there will always be exceptions, however based on my experience, I have very rarely been mistaken using this concept of personality identification, which makes communication so much easier and indeed relevant.

If you want to learn more about the four social styles and how to influence them, you will enjoy this: “How To Relate To And Influence The Four Personality Types”

Today’s News: Interesting post from Ardath Albee that I think you might enjoy - “The Truth About Trust In Business” and also this one from Chad Levitt – “Marketing To The Social Web”

A number of people have been asking me whatever happened to my plans to launch the Sales Leadership Zone - be assured my friends, it is coming, but it will be part of something so much more significant! – More soon..

There are two escalating pressures in to-day’s marketplace that are creating a need for a more disciplined approach towards sales opportunities:

• The need to be more specialised and individualised in dealing with clients because we can no longer afford to treat all situations in the same way.

• The reality of competition. – Often to increase market share, you must do so at the direct expense of the competition. The competitive intensity of the sales environment is escalating with the globalisation of the economy.

These are the main “drivers” behind the demand that organisations adopt methodologies and processes to manage these issues.

By utilising a rigorous and formal opportunity assessment, we are aiming to achieve two sets of objectives:

Business Objectives

• Determine which sales opportunities should be pursued at the direct expense of others.

• Given resource limitations, decide where and on what basis resource should be allocated to a sales opportunity.

• Determine whether our company is over-investing or under-investing in a sales opportunity.

• Enhance forecast accuracy.

• Use “proven” criteria to reduce the cost of sales

Sales Objectives

• Identify, quantify, and categorize opportunity assessment criteria.
• Increase “Hit-Rate” (Win – Loss ratios) by avoiding unsuitable business.
• Discover where we and our competition stand with a customer.
• Gain a complete and accurate view of a sales situation prior to writing a sales plan to win.
• Calculate the probability of winning or losing a deal early in the sales process.

All sales professionals claim to be permanently time constrained: We always have limited time and resources with which to achieve our targets.

We can be involved in only so many accounts or sales situations before we begin to lose your ability to manage what is taking place. At that point we lose control and the competition takes control.

We can only control and manage what we understand and that is the real value of continuous and rigorous assessment of our pipelines.

Today’s News: Please don’t forget that I have extended an invitation for you join me on today’s Top Sales Experts Masterclass -

“The Incredible Value Of Sales Team Audits”

Tuesday September 8th 2009 1:30 PM EASTERN (6.30 PM GMT)

You can reserve your FREE place HERE

Millions, if not hundreds of millions of pounds world-wide, are wasted every year on irrelevant, unnecessary, or inappropriate sales skills development.

The point here is that there is far too little planning, assessing, and objective setting; it is much easier to abdicate responsibility to the training company. The downside to this approach is of course, so much money is wasted. So what is the answer?

The first step for any company deciding to make a change in their sales approach is always an assessment of the situation.  What processes and methods are currently being employed by the company?  What has their sales performance been?  What percentage of sales people are delivering against plan?  What are the biggest obstacles to success?  How dynamic or stable is the company’s environment?  What are the practices and expectations of the buyers?  These are only a few considerations.

Training must be based on what the salespeople need and should be tailored to address diagnosed performance gaps. Using a diagnostic approach – a formal sales team skills audit, saves an organisation money and time because there is nothing to be gained from teaching people something that they are already doing well or, conversely, that they don’t need to do in the first place. A well-targeted programme is far more likely to engage participants’ full interest because they’ll see its immediate relevance to their daily results.

Furthermore, at the front-end – i.e. the recruitment stage – decisions are often made with the aid of generalised psychometric testing at best, or totally subjectively at worst. Poor decisions can cost a company thousands, even hundreds of thousands of pounds in salaries, expenses and, of course, underachieved revenue – unfortunately it can take months to discover an error.

But it really need not be like that any longer

This is an invitation to join Kendra Lee and myself, for a forty five minute  Top Sales Experts Masterclass, where you too will discover the incredible value of sales team audits.

Tuesday September 8th 2009 1:30 PM EASTERN (6.30 PM GMT)

Reserve your FREE place HERE

Today’s News: Over at Top 10 Sales Articles, Tibor Shanto is leading Colleen Francis, but Jill Konrath is coming up on the rails – have you voted yet?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” – Charles Darwin

A rapidly changing environment is the regular background against which organisations must develop. Change is continuous and will become more rapid as we move forward over time. Senior management must be capable of reacting to those changes and be prepared to take advantage of them and yet stay within the overall framework and agreed strategy.
 
Whatever got you where you are to day will not be sufficient to keep you there ….

The role of strategy is fundamental if the people within the organisation are to be enabled to make the level of contribution of which they are capable. Strategy, based on a good grasp of the core competencies of a business, is an essential precursor to achieving optimal shareholder value.

Dependence on salespeople is key to delivering the latent capability of a business. Our salespeople are the greatest source of competitive advantage we have and that is precisely why we should continue to invest in them and fully develop them.

This is particularly true now that in most market sectors competitive advantage is continually being eroded – i.e. International barriers are coming down, selling time is becoming limited, competitors are getting smarter, fewer and fewer names are appearing on companies’ databases, and product uniqueness is rare. Conversely, undeveloped personnel can bring down a company through inadequate performance, leaving the competition to harvest the marketplace.

The difference that makes the difference …..

As you will have heard often enough, according to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things in the hope that those things will miraculously achieve a different result. If that is the case, then sales managers who are not happy with the results they are achieving must make changes.”Keep doing what you are doing and you will keep getting what you have been getting”

Organizations that want to increase their sales results need to approach sales differently to create “the difference that makes the difference” and positively impacts business results.

A commitment to excellence …..

Organizations and salespeople who have 100% commitment to doing whatever it takes to elevate their sales to a whole new level are the ones most likely to succeed. Trying to operate a sales organization without total commitment is like trying to drive a car without fuel. But every organization has the potential to harness the power of their salespeople just as surely as oxygen pumps life into the human body.

Do look out for my next white paper, “Post Recession, The Five Critical Challenges, and How to Meet Them“

“When the Leaders are leading the followers will follow”

Unfortunately most salesmen and women believe that a successful career in sales culminates in sales management, and yet there are of course far less management positions up for grabs than sales positions.

As a consequence, salespeople with this attitude concentrate on making sales rather than investing in themselves in order to become Top 5 % players and eventually most become disillusioned, resulting in a significant dip in achievements levels.

The knock-on effect of this is that good Level 2 salespeople who move into management, take with them an underdeveloped view of selling – a Level 2 orientation and as consequence they help to create or maintain an unrealistic and short sighted vision of what will be needed to develop their teams.

Because they lack Level 3 experience themselves and an insight into the skills needed to make it at Level 3, the environment that they help to create fails to recognise the need for Level 3 performers and this is particularly noticeable in the compensation structures they build, which neither supports nor encourages their teams to break through that final glass ceiling.

Good salespeople don’t necessarily make good managers
The single most common mistake that organizations make is promoting their number one salesperson into the role of sales manager, thereby depriving themselves in a single stroke of their best producer and hamstringing their sales force with an ineffective manager.

The skills required for managing, mentoring, and developing a sales team are totally different from those required for selling. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find newly promoted sales managers who regret having taken a management position and may even leave to get back into sales.

Insufficient time for sales team development
The majority of sales managers – new and experienced alike – say they do not have sufficient time to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results – and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results – that they overlook their greatest potential source of power: the power to increase sales performance by developing their people.

This from my friend and colleague Linda Richardson:
“The sales manager’s role is transforming – from evaluator to developer, from expert to resource, from teller to questioner. This change is no mere tweaking adjustment – it is a 180° shift from how most sales managers manage and how they are managed. Most organizations profess to want coaching, but they don’t really do anything about it. Just as students are lucky to have one or two special teachers in a lifetime, most sales professionals are lucky if they get one real coach. Organizations don’t have role models for coaching, they don’t train for it, and they don’t hold people accountable for it.”

Sales Directors who recognize that the different roles played by salespeople and managers require different skill sets, factor those differences into their recruitment and selection of sales managers. Instead of promoting top-performers purely on the strength of their sales performance, these Sales Directors look for management candidates who can demonstrate an ability to help others strategise, work effectively with customers, and build their self-confidence. These Sales Directors recognize that coaching competence is absolutely pivotal and feature it highly in managers’ performance reviews and remuneration packages.

Those same successful Sales Directors ensure that some sort of training and development program is in place to help sales managers continually improve the way they coach and develop their team. Equally important, top-performing Sales Directors look for ways to provide sales managers with the resources they need to perform effectively. This may mean, for example, giving managers tools with which to identify each individual salesperson’s strengths and development areas, providing them with an easy-to-use framework to address development areas, and putting a process in place that helps their team to implement new skills.

But you know, the most common error, that most companies make, is failing to adequately train and prepare their sales managers, before the output is required. They lack the vision to seek out “Top Guns”

That concludes this week’s series – “Post Recession – The Five Challenges” but tomorrow, I will provide a summary, so be sure to join me.

“Allowing self-limiting beliefs to constrain salespeople’s performance, will in turn limit sales results”

Like everyone, salespeople hold stubbornly to private beliefs about themselves, clients, markets, competition, and economy – beliefs that can have an enormous impact, either positive or negative, on their sales performance.

If salespeople don’t see themselves as providing value for their prospects and clients, they’ll tend to approach customers in ways that appeal to reasons for buying other than the customer’s genuine business need. This is what sometimes leads salespeople to act pushy (for example, pressing a customer to “act now” in order to get a low price) or to be too accommodating (appealing to a customer’s interest in getting his or her way).

It also can lead salespeople to unethical behaviors because they may try to sell a customer something that the customer might not need. If they don’t take care of their clients’ best interests, salespeople will fail to build long-term client relationships and lose customers.

Transference
Recognizes that the salesperson’s state of mind is instantly transferred to their prospect/customer, which means that the challenge for organizations is “to constantly create a highly resourceful state in their salespeople”. This is extremely important because when salespeople lack belief in themselves, their product, or their service, they unconsciously transmit their attitude to prospects in a variety of subtle and sometimes overt ways.

Limiting beliefs limit performance
Napoleon Hill, in his timeless 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich”, wrote about the importance of how what we think will affect what we do. 

Typically, salespeople who believe that if they had cheaper prices, they would win more deals, tend to attract more price objections. This in turn leaves them feeling scared or reluctant to talk to prospects about what they have to offer. Their downward spiral then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Salespeople’s desire to succeed may be so dominated by a need to be liked that they’ll avoid asking prospects for information that is needed to identify the prospects’ compelling reasons to buy. When this happens, closing becomes a real issue because salespeople, fearing rejection, perceive that asking for the sale might cause a breakdown in the relationship with their prospect.

The organization with the ability to overcome the variety of mental models living in the minds of their workforce will be the organization that wins in the future. Emphasis has to be placed on creating an environment in which the ‘can do – will do’ mentality thrives and becomes the norm – success and achievement are expected and as a consequence are much more likely to happen. 

Indeed those organizations that recognize the importance of helping their salespeople develop a strong sense of self worth are many times more likely to produce high performers.

Self worth is vital to everyone but especially to salespeople who hear “no” more often than they hear “yes, I’ll buy”.

A salesperson’s self-esteem can sometimes take a beating, but organizations that find ways to build their salespeople’s self-esteem reap an invaluable dividend: according to Jay Abraham, Marketing Strategist, when salespeople really believe in their product/service and the value that they personally provide, they have a moral obligation to talk with as many prospects as they can about it.

Self –worth translates into attitude, that small thing that makes such a big difference the most successful salespeople take care of their attitude and they understand that:

 Great Attitude = Great Results,
 Average Attitude = Average Results,
 Poor Attitude = Poor Results.       

The second commonality is that they expect to be successful and they want it badly enough that they bring about it’s happening. I.e. fulfilled expectation.

Some additional reading for you: “Motivation – Moving Beyond The Carrot And Stick Theory”

Tomorrow, the final instalment in this week’s series; Challenge Five – “When the leaders are leading, the followers will follow”

Today’s News:

Over at Salesopedia, this week’s interview is: Sales Excellence in Turbulent Times with David Johnston

“How do you achieve sales excellence in turbulent times? David Johnston discusses sales performance management and the challenges faced globally in improving sales productivity. Keeping top performers is one area of critical concerns David talks about and he identifies what progressive companies are doing to respond. He looks at what and how companies should be responding as they look to the future and coming out of the recession.” You can listen in HERE

“The less I see of what’s his name? – The more I forget him!”

A vitally important sales activity is that of managing existing customer accounts to consolidate and grow the relationship. Yet, unfortunately, when compared over time, the customers’ interest levels increase while salespeople’s interest levels tend to decrease.

This creates a “relationship gap”.

To-days, clients/customers are looking for vendors who can be business partners, who are willing and able to share risks and who are able to properly manage the entire sales process.

Traditional commercial methods are being relegated to the annals of history. The new, more discerning customers of today have seen to that. They now wield greater bargaining power, demand more value for money and have become more knowledgeable and professional when it comes to decision-making.  Essentially they are crying out ‘‘understand me first, then sell to me ’’ this is precisely why we need a new type of approach for a new type of customer.

In essence, without a sustained approach to ongoing servicing and support activities, customers that took months to win are ultimately lost because there was a lack of interest from their supplier.

Maximizing a workforce around one common goal that creates value for the customer, the organization, and the employee is the only way to focus the activities of a sales team. It is critical that each employee is able to measure the value of each activity undertaken during the day and can make the connection to the overall goals and strategy of the organization. If there is no clear line of sight between what they are doing and the value to the customer, clearly they are doing the wrong thing

No rating will keep sales waiting!
The more existing accounts that salespeople have, the less time they can devote to prospecting for new client business. Therefore, they need objective criteria to determine which of their prospects to contact first. This can produce huge timesaving that have enabled several organizations to increase sales purely by introducing “prospect criteria”.

The concept behind prospect criteria is that the salesperson creates a profile of the type of customers who offer the greatest potential for doing business. Factors that enter into a customer’s priority score might include such things as level of business need, budget, and reference able accounts in the same industry. A simple rating system allows the salesperson to determine which prospects to contact first and ensure that they visit all of the right people

Periodically, the Financial Times conducts a survey of British industry to try to establish how companies go about their purchasing.

The survey is very comprehensive, broken down into many kinds of products and services. It also groups every kind together to give an overall picture…

From a Sales Director’s perspective, these are very worrying statistics.

Questions are the answer
When planning sales activities, the following five questions answered fully help maximize sales activity:

 When looking at potential customers, how do your salespeople decide if they are right for your organization?
 Which of your salespeople’s prospects do they contact first?
 How can your salespeople objectively define the probability of new business?
 What actions do your salespeople take to reduce the risk of losing their customers?
 What actions do your salespeople take to develop new business from existing customers?

Only when sales leaders have clear, comprehensive answers to these questions can real, effective, account management begin.

Here is some additional reading that you may enjoy: “Making The Most Of Customer Service”

Tomorrow, we move on to Challenge Four – “The significance of sales team morale, and in post recession, the debilitating effect of “self-limiting beliefs”

Today’s News: You really must tune in to this… It is going to be be great!!

I am so looking forward to it: Niall is absolutely brilliant and so refreshingly original. No over-inflated  ego here!!  What you see/hear is what  you get. 

You can book your FREE place here - you will thank me!!

“Some salespeople have ten years selling experience, most have one year’s experience ten times.”

During the 1970s and 1980s, it was common for large corporations such as Hewlett Packard and IBM to put their new sales recruits through a twelve to eighteen-month training programme. Today, salespeople consider themselves “lucky” if they get an initial two weeks of training.

Have companies discovered that training doesn’t really pay off? On the contrary! Training appears to be even more important today than years ago, and it is getting more important all the time.

Less training with higher expectations
So, what’s going on here? How should a Sales Director reconcile the fact that many corporations today provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past yet attach increasing importance to staff development?

This is hardly a surprise, because the current stock market ethos creates a powerful disincentive for firms to invest in their people.

A firm’s investment of human capital, in the form of training and other forms of education of staff, is not separable from the general expenditure of a corporation. It therefore appears as a cost on the corporate balance sheet. To the investor, it appears that companies that invest in their “intangible” assets are being less cost efficient. This prevents investors from assessing the firm’s future earnings potential.

Difficult times
Alas, many Sales Directors, having concluded that their best strategy is to cut back on training, look instead to hire people who already possess all the talent and skills needed to do the job and send them out into the field armed with what they know. But many Sales Directors know how difficult it is to find skilled salespeople. However it is not possible to equate experience or seniority with success.

Huge demands on salespeople
The fact is that selling in today’s climate is both an art and a science. Selling is a profession that demands a far wider range of skills than ever before  – skills that require continual fine-tuning and constant practice.

Recent exhaustive surveys suggest that only 5% of professional salespeople reach and remain at the highest level – which we call Level 3 A further 15% attain Level 2 status, but the majority – i.e. a massive 80% remain at Level 1 in terms of potential achievement.

Lack of ongoing reinforcement and development
The operative word here is “continual”. Even if salespeople have undergone progressive sales training, there’s no guarantee that they will be successful. It is common knowledge that skills grow rusty over time and salespeople are prone to pick-up bad habits along the way or to simply skip steps and take shortcuts that can lead to long-term trouble.

Perhaps even more important these days is the fact that markets, competition, technologies, and customer preferences are all in a constant and accelerating state of change over time. This fact requires that sales people are able and willing to rethink their sales strategy and approach frequently. and receive a regular top-up of skills and motivational coaching

The lengthy initial training for new recruits, that once was the norm, was well suited to a world in which the market and sales cycle were both reasonably stable. In today’s more dynamic business environment, development and training are more important than ever before, but must be delivered in smaller and more frequent chunks, with less disruption to the daily flow of salespeople’s work and tied more closely to subtle shifts in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, selling is viewed as non-academic, functional, and not sophisticated. No M.B.A. required!

In reality, selling is the key to real marketplace knowledge and brand success. For Sales Directors, the challenge is how to design and deliver skills development programs that produce the desired results in today’s competitive markets.

You may also enjoy: “What Are The Characteristics Of  The Very Best Sales Performers”

Tomorrow, I discuss Challenge Three – “Customer focus, really does create competitive advantage.”

Today’s News: Very interesting post over on Dave Stein’s blog:

“What Salespeople Need To Know, But Don’t”

“Building a comprehensive and relevant learning curriculum for B2B salespeople is always a challenge.  On the list are many basic and advanced selling skills, product knowledge, industry knowledge, competitive knowledge, company (back office, for example) knowledge, research approaches, technology skills (using CRM, for example), and more.”

“If you’re interested in seeing how fluent you are in these areas, you might take Executive Conversation’s quick test“

As I have said on numerous occasions: “It is difficult to control external events if you do not have control internally.”

Even companies that enjoy the luxury of clearly superior products, realise that those products will not sell themselves. As a minimum, companies need a sales force comprised of skilled professionals who understand the application of the product range, have an in-depth knowledge of their customer base, market sector and of course the competition It also helps to provide this front-line customer facing team with first-class support including marketing, product literature and where appropriate, technical support.

But even all these elements together are not sufficient to ensure optimum performance levels and profitable sales.

So what is a sales process?

Put quite simply, it is a set of procedures, which determine how a company wishes it’s sales team to operate – “The way we do things around here”

The most successful organisations have implemented a process and an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards. This involves assessing, appraising, developing, reviewing, providing continual feedback on performance, as well as implementing efficient and relevant process tools.

From the Sales Director’s perspective, developing a consultative sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic, and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as it is for external pro-active ones.

This outline includes the activity and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can be in a position to:
 Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,
 Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,
 Redirect individual sales representatives’ efforts efficiently.

Although many organizations appreciate the importance of being customer-focused and talk in vague terms about their “consultative sales process”, surprisingly few sales leaders invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales process – a sales process that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide their salespeople and permit effective management of their efforts.

Unfortunately, even when a consultative sales process has been developed, understood by sales managers, written down and circulated, it’s often not enough.

No matter how brilliant, a sales process will only be effective to the extent it is followed and used by frontline sales staff. And this is where most organisations fall down: overcoming inertia – among managers and salespeople alike – and implementing the process.

The hurdles that must be cleared in order to get people throughout the organisation to actually implement it, are enough to cause Sales Directors to tear their hair out. But a select few, of the very best, have found some innovative strategies that have enabled them to achieve the Holy Grail: Sustained sales growth achieved efficiently, reliably and by design.

My sales process? The one that I have used for the past twenty five years? Oh, it looks like this….it has served me well.

This then is the first, post-recession challenge facing sales leaders.

Tomorrow, I discuss Challenge Two, “What really is the future of skills development?”

Today’s News: Friend and colleague, Colleen Francis, has just launched a new initiative – see below….