Achieve reliable sales success with IDEAL
Make sales the natural result of following five steps
1. Intend
"Intend" is the basis of a plan for success. Think of it as a compass that orients you toward a destination (a goal) and establishes the essential, or primary, steps to that destination.
What do you intend? Define "success." What is the specific result (sales goal) that you want to achieve?
Determine when and how you will achieve that goal.
ALL successes achieved in business involve a process (actions, steps). So, too, all sales require steps that you and your buyer must take in order for a sale to be possible.
These primary steps are called your "sales process." Learn how to improve your process and you'll improve your sales.
If there are problems with your sales process, you will lose sales. Don't waste time with marketing and strategy when you need an effective process.
In order to improve your process, first get clear on what each step intends to achieve. Each step of your process must have a clear objective that, as accomplished, advances the potential for a sale.
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Your work with Steven (a multiple award-winning sales professional) can fast-track you to greater sales success!
2. Direct
To "direct" is to make decisions for or along the course you've chosen for your success.
At this point, you decide how you will support the primary steps of your process with supplemental steps. Example:
A primary step in your process may be to schedule meetings with prospective clients. The supplemental step would be to create an outreach strategy.
Each step in your sales process is an opportunity to sell, so make each one is working for you. On that note, there are several ways to approach selling something. If you don't have and test options for the steps in your process, you may be losing sales. Look for options for more effective ways to sell. In most cases, any given step in the process may be substituted with an alternative step. There's a good chance that improvements can be made with some, if not all, of the steps that facilitate your sales.
It's important to recognize the difference between your sales process and workflow. Workflow refers to what you do behind-the-scenes to sell. Your decisions and actions - in the background - that impact sales.
However you sell, note all of the activities that are directly and indirectly related to how sales occur, and protect them—protect their effectiveness. Your success depends on them.
3. Engage
By this step in IDEAL, you have an aim and a course. You now must determine standards for your activities. What are the results that your activities must achieve in order to prevent your goal from being in jeopardy of failure?
Your sales process and workflow are not worth much if you don't support them with the skills and strategies they require.
The Engage steps is about what activities are essential to success and what results those activities must achieve for the needs of your process and its support.
The challenge to grow sales centers on two areas: your process (the steps you to take in order to sell) and your performance of those steps. If your process is problematic, your performance is not your primary problem. If your process is effective and your performance is deficient, you'll continue to struggle. Your aim must be for synergy between your process and performance.
4. Assess
In need to achieve reliable sales success, you must learn from your effort to sell. This necessitates your having accurate data to review.
The key here is to have SWEET insights about your sales process and sales efforts. SWEET gives you insight about your: strategies; workflow; efficacy (what is / isn't working); efficiency; and tests that have or should be conducted.
Productivity is the most misunderstood requirement for sales success. Actual productivity is specific to the demands of your sales goal and your process.
The pursuit of sales success makes data critically important. You can know what is and isn't working for you, if you have standards and record results from activity.
Remember: productivity is not about activity; it's about the results required in order to sufficiently advance you toward your goal. Therefore, it is important to always know where you stand - whether or not you are actually productive.
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Do you need to be more productive? If so, expert support is available. Schedule a call with Steven.
5. Learn
Determine what resources could be useful to you, and identify options for your sales process, sales activities, and their support.
Get support. Schedule a free consultation to get answers to your questions. Learn how to apply IDEAL and create a plan for your sales success.
Read Sales Success, Naturally. Available now for immediate access!
It's not enough to know what greater success requires; you've got to deliver what's required in order to succeed. This means you've got to learn what is and is not working for you in your process, strategies, and efforts. You need to know when to make changes, and have the ability to provide what is required. And all of this requires you to have resources and be knowledgeable about your options.
In order to make wise decisions about where to focus sales improvement efforts, you need to learn. At this point, many sales operation fail to achieve high performance. Avoid that pitfall. Identify the resources you need to be up-to-date on everything relevant to your success.
Get support:
Having expert sales support could be invaluable to your greater success. Talk with Steven, to learn how to apply data, fast track your sales growth, and achieve reliable sales success.
At minimum . . .
You're interested in sales. You may be a business owner who is solely responsible for sales or, perhaps, you lead a team of professionals who sell. Whatever your situation, whatever your industry, whatever the size of your company and experience with sales work, sales improvement comes down to just two things:
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the process by which you attempt to convert a potential for sales into actual sales
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your performance – how you apply the skills required in order to support your process.
Of course, there is more to know about high performance sales, but, regardless, the fact remains: the sales you have, and your greater sales potential, are only possible by way of your efforts (performance, what you do) and the steps you take (process) by which to sell.
If you need support with your process and performance, coaching with Steven could get you on the fast-track to the sales success that you want.
The course to sales-ability
Sales never occur spontaneously; they are always the result of some process, a few steps—from you and those who buy from you. If you want to improve sales, consider your process. And, at this point, rethink what you've known, or have assumed, about how sales occur.
Sales is a dynamic profession; it changes. There is a new, more effect way to approach success in sales, and it involves thinking differently about the nature and purpose of sales work.
For example, consider the meaning of "close." It is more accurate and advantageous to recognize this: a sale isn't actually "closed" until a buyer is satisfied with their purchase.
However you sell, and whatever you sell, the surest course to satisfied buyers and greater sales starts with how you think about sales.
Learn a new approach to sales success, and be on your way to "closing" more (and bigger) sales, whatever your business, and however you sell—online (e-commerce), virtual meetings, in-person, through a single salesperson, or through a team of salespeople.
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Sales: A Troubled Profession
If you're unsure about how to improve sales, you're not alone. In fact, year-after-year, the sales profession struggles with ongoing challenges. This fact is made crystal clear in the annual reports published by your favorite business and sales support resources.
What and where you sell doesn't matter
The answer to improved sales and reliable sales success is NOT particular to what or how you sell—on-line, in-person, by yourself or through a team of salespeople. Whatever and however you sell, the solution to the ongoing challenges sales reps and managers face begins with a new approach to sales success.
Learn how to apply IDEAL to improve sales, regardless of your industry, size of your company, or how you sell.
IDEAL gives you a structure by which to plan and manage sales success.
Learn more in a short, no obligation phone conversation with Steven.
The hard truth
Problems in the sales profession are multifaceted and include: lack of knowledge about how to create reliable sales success; deficient sales management; insufficient skills; lack of structure and support; operational imbalance; inconsistent practices. Add to all of this the fact that sales is a dynamic profession; it continually evolves – from buyer and market trends, new competition, technological advances, applications, etc.
Sales professionals will continue to struggle—to catch-up and then overcome their long-term difficulties—until a paradigm shift occurs to change the thinking of sales leaders.
Learn a more effective approach to reliable sales success.
Be able to improve
You can’t expect sales improvement without doing something differently.
The place to start is to question what you know, and assume, about sales. If what you know about how to sell is outdated or inaccurate, your decisions about how to achieve reliable sales success may lead you to disappointment.
