Selling In Today's World: Eight Tips for Optimizing Your Sales Success

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Selling In Today's World: Eight Tips for Optimizing Your Sales Success

Written by Steve Young

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You Do Need A Game Plan for Success! Develop A Selling System

This truth – that good systems make people effective -- operates in every area of work. Talk to effective professionals in any field, and they will verify that they use effective principles, processes, and tools to complete complex tasks. They use a system.

"I Have My Own Style of Selling"
I have heard this countless times, usually from relatively inexperienced salespeople. What they really mean is, “I don’t have any real system to what I do, I don’t want any scrutiny, and I probably am not going to learn anything from you.”

Does every salesperson have a unique style of selling? Or, are they just trying to hide from accountability under the cover of individual “style”? Or is there some other explanation?

More importantly, should your company allow every salesperson to have their own style, or should you have system for selling to which everyone adheres?

Do You Have A System?
Almost any work can be systematic. “Systems” are how good work gets done. McDonald’s did not grow its business by hiring people and letting them figure out how to best greet a customer, take an order, fry potatoes, and assemble a cheeseburger. Instead, they figured out the best way, secured the tools, documented the process, and trained everyone to do it that way. Because of the system, McDonald’s can make almost anyone, regardless of capability, into a productive, effective employee.

This truth – that good systems make people effective -- operates in every area of work. Talk to effective professionals in any field, and they will verify that they use effective principles, processes, and tools to complete complex tasks. They use a system.

In fact, the more important and complex the task, the more likely that the principles and processes have been defined and codified. How would you feel if you buckled the seat belt on an airliner and listened as the captain announced that he has his own way of flying the plane?

This is not to say that there is not room for individual differences, for continuous improvement, and for variations based on the specifics of the situation. But those are more embellishments than structure – like the icing on a cake.

You probably apply this principle in every other aspect of your business. Don’t you have a system for almost every important process in your business? Aren’t your customer service reps expected to input an order in a certain way, and respond to a customer in a certain fashion? Don’t your purchasing people follow certain procedures, and aren’t they guided by certain principles and criteria to ensure that they make the best decisions? Don’t your warehouse employees ship, receive, stock and pick orders in a certain well-organized, duplicable fashion?

Develop a Game Plan
Why should sales be different?

It isn’t. There are principles, processes and tools that have been proven to be more effective than others in sales. A selling system addresses the interaction between the salesperson and the customer, providing a “game plan” for success. Think of it as a template for the salesperson’s face-to-face tactical encounters.

Study any successful company that fields a large number of salespeople, and you’ll discover that almost every one has a well-defined, duplicable selling system. And they teach that system to their salespeople – “This is the way we keep track of our files, this is the way we collect information about our customers, this is the way we present this product or that one, this is the way we think about strategy, this is the way we develop a weekly plan,” etc. The larger, older, and more successful a company is, the more likely it is to have a highly sophisticated and refined selling system.

To be effective and productive in your sales efforts, sooner or later you need to develop a selling system.

Your system should have variations for each major market segment. For example, the “best way” to sell to a truck line may not be the best way to sell to a tool and die shop. Typically, a selling system defines a sales process for each segment, and then addresses the best ways to accomplish each step in that process.

Take truck lines for example. The most effective process may be to make an appointment with a purchasing person, to collect information at the first face-to-face meeting, to prepare a written proposal, to personally deliver that proposal, and then to make a personal face-to-face follow up call. That may be the process piece of the system. The tools might consist of a script for making the appointment, a profile form to collect the information, a capability brochure to use to describe and introduce the company, a standard “proposal” form, and a set of carefully crafted questions to use throughout the process. The tactics may be a series of techniques to facilitate each step of the process.

When all those pieces are put in place - the appropriate processes, tools and tactics - you would have a selling system. And when you have a selling system, and when you have trained all your salespeople in that system, you will have taken a major step forward. You’re ready for the big leagues.

Contrary to popular belief, sales is not a “numbers game.” If sales were any sort of game, sales would be a game of strategy in which “numbers” are among several factors. Today’s superior sales strategies aim to achieve sales as a “natural” result of a well-designed process. A sales system should monitor the effectiveness of any strategy executed through a tailored sales program. If you do not use a sales system in tandem with a strategic sales program, you cannot optimize your sales success. Once a sales program and the relevant training are completed, the sales process can be initiated.

There are Three Dimensions to the Most Prevalent Sales Paradigm:

(a) the offering(s)—the products and services—of a company;
(b) the prospects, or potential buyers of the offering(s); and
(c) a facilitator, a means—the salesperson—by which prospects are presented the offerings.

In order for sales to occur, a process for converting prospects into clients or customers must exist. The essential goal of a sales improvement effort is to discover and maximize the process that most efficiently and profitably converts prospective buyers into buyers.

Here Are Eight Tips That May Prove Helpful To You

1. Improve your ability to intrigue your prospect.

Effective persuasion is an advanced sales skill that many senior-level salespeople lack. Why should a prospect take your call or respond to your email? Why should a prospect meet with you? Answer these and all related questions before attempting to engage in a sales pursuit. Persuasion requires being able to engage, and engagement requires being able to intrigue a prospect, which is an invaluable sales skill.

The attention of a prospect is not sufficient; you need to gain their interest, which requires your offer to be attractive. Desirability is subjective. Be careful of projecting your interests, values, beliefs, etc. onto your prospects. Your prospect may not share your point of view. (This is why I require having a recovery plan and a minimum of two leveraging points before attempting an initial call.) In order to intrigue, creativity and information attained during a profiling step (an investigative aspect of a process that is conducted during an initial meeting) may prove to be an essential component of your sales program.

2. Question the value of pop-sales tools and concepts.

Popularized sales tools include constructs, such as the sales funnel, concepts such as “best practices,” and techniques, such as “closing.” These tools are generic, mass-marketed products of popularized sales ideology. The popularization of something is typically intended to capitalize on mass appeal in order to profit those promoting the popularization. Question their value to your business.

Catchy and sensationalized titles of sales books, courses, and seminars titillate audiences to buy, but usually deliver over-simplified, broad-based content that diminishes the less appealing, albeit more substantive, messages that would be more beneficial for buyers to understand, such that explain the work involved in building a reliable, profit-building sales operation. Sales services that offer a “quick and easy” solution cannot be expected to deliver the reliable and sustained sales results that you want for you business.

3. Know where you stand.

How does your offer compare with that of your competition? What are your sales challenges? What are your company’s leveraging points? What is your vision for success? What are your strengths and weaknesses? How will you convert your weaknesses into strengths? What do you have to learn about your industry, market, and prospects in order to sell much more effectively?

4. Have a vision.

“Vision” often denotes a “big picture” perspective, which is important; but those I manage have a vision for making each day successful, which requires knowing what to accomplish each day. Successful business owners, sales managers, and salespeople are not aimless, nor do they squander time reserved for productivity. They are dedicated to improving sales with focused attention to a course that is defined by a vision.

5. Reconsider your cold-calling practices.

Few sales roles necessitate cold-calling. The telemarketer is a classic example of a sales role necessitating the cold-call. Unless your work necessitates cold-calling, do not cold-call. The practice of cold-calling annoys most prospects. The advent of the Internet—its resources—has enabled salespeople to replace the cold-call with the initial call (IC). The IC is an intriguing, research-based, and other-centered reason for reaching out to a prospective client. A cold-call is no longer a cold-call when a content relevant tie-in provides basis that promotes a meaningful, mutually beneficial connection. Maximize your chances of success. Conduct research, find leveraging points, and personalize your initial calls with the relevant and valuable data that creates a meaningful tie-in that engages your prospect.

6. Know why your prospect should buy from you. Help them understand your value.

Effective sales work gives prospective clients a vision, linking their interests with your offer. In order to link, salespeople must understand why their offer should be valued by the specific prospect, and have no less than two approaches for communicating the idea of a mutually beneficial relationship with you.

7. Nurture the rapport.

The most neglected and yet most important step in acquiring new clients is nurturing a rapport with prospects. Solid research, proper application of leveraging points, and appropriates sales techniques will enable you to gain meetings with prospective buyers. However, without a well-defined process for nurturing business opportunities, you will lose sales. I require those I manage to maintain account acquisition campaigns for all their viable prospects.

Account acquisition campaigns (AAC) are simple yet essential means for maintaining the attention of a prospect with whom you seek a business relationship or transaction. Of course, AACs are not appropriate for all sales programs.

8. Stage your success.

Few salespeople actually sell. Most of those employed in sales today are representatives of a company’s products and/or services whose work involves going through the motions of some routine with little thought. Their sales are incidental. Comparatively, the sales of the professionals are the orchestrated results of staging: a positioning skill involving effecting events and dynamics that influence the production of sales. The ultimate purpose of a sales system is to discover, optimize, and manage the most effective and profitable process for staging successful sales.

Sell well!

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Steve Young
		About the author:
		Steve Young is a nationally respected, “outside the box” sales expert who is President of ESM4, Inc. and founder of IDEAL Sales. After twenty-five plus years of sales experience working with companies as visible as Chevron, as prestigious as the production firm for the Oscars and Emmys, and numerous Fortune-ranked corporations, Steve created IDEAL Sales, the next-generation sales solutions resource for business owners and sales managers. Steve has written articles published by the world’s largest online sales communities and is author of the book IDEAL Sales.