Business owners: Grow your sales! Learn about Cross-Through
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 requires knowledge about how to achieve success.
​
The BENEFITS of this knowledge includes having:
​
-
A course to a specific sales goal
​
-
High-performance sales activity
​
-
Useful insight for improved productivity
​
-
More sales opportunities
​
-
The ability to improve
Sales and the Productivity Cornerstones
1. Plan
You may not know it, but if you sell or try to sell, you have a plan. By definition, an "effort made to succeed" means that you have an idea about how success is possible. And you may have been correct. Now, you need a plan for greater success!
If there are problems with your plan, you will lose sales. Don't waste time with marketing and sales strategy when you need an effective plan.
Your work with Steven (a multiple award-winning sales professional) can fast-track you to greater sales success!
2. Prepare
Workflow refers to what you do behind-the-scenes to sell. Your decisions and actions in the background impact the sales that you have. Learn how to better support your sales with greater productivity.
Productivity is the most misunderstood requirement for sales success. Actual productivity is specific to the demands of your sales goal and your process. Productivity is not about activity; it's about results required in order to sufficiently advance you toward your goal. Do you need to be more productive? If so, expert support is available. Contact Steven.
3. Pursue / Produce
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 know what is and is not working for you in your process and strategies. 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 data, information about your efforts to sell.
In order to make wise decisions about where to focus sales improvement efforts, you need information. At this point, many sales operation fail to achieve high performance. Having expert sales support could be invaluable to your greater success. Talk with Steven, to learn how to manage and apply data to fast track your sales growth.
4. Progress
Your sales process and workflow are not worth much if you don't support them with the skills and strategies they require. Put forth efforts that are sufficient for the needs of your process and its support.
You can improve your sales. However, if you're interested in greater sales, your challenge centers on two areas: your process (the steps you to take in order to sell) and your performance (activity) to satisfy your process. If your process is problematic, your performance is not your primary problem. If your process is effective and your performance deficient, you'll continue to struggle. Your aim is for a desirable effect from a synergy between your process and performance.
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:
-
the process by which you attempt to convert a potential for sales into actual sales
-
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. At this point, rethink what you've known, or 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 is involves thinking differently about the meaning of "close." A sales isn't finalized, or "closed," until a buyer is satisfied with their purchase. However you sell, and whatever you sell, the surest course to greater sales and satisfied buyers is with POWER, five steps that include the IDEAL process.
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 salesperson or team of salespeople.
Ability Matters
​
Sales is not just a “numbers game” because the numbers (results) depend on competency, the quality of:
-
knowledge/experience and
-
range of skills of a salesperson;
-
effectiveness of the salesperson’s approach / strategy (ability to execute);
-
efficiency of the salesperson’s process;
-
quality of the salesperson’s opportunities, among other factors, such as:
-
the salesperson’s incentive / motivation to sell;
-
the salesperson’s performance standard, and
-
the salesperson’s support system (sales management, resources, etc.)
​
The Point
-
Sales seen as merely a “numbers game” is an oversimplification of the profession that could lead one to under value the importance of the requirements that produce the “numbers” (results).
-
Sales is no more a numbers game than football is just a game of scoring. Football (as is true of other sports) is a game of strategy, skill, coaching support, and knowledge about playing conditions, offense/defense dynamics, and player strength/weakness relative to various game situations.
-
Sales as a “game of conversion” dependent upon quality of process, which relies on knowledge, skills, and support, in order to achieve reliable success.
-
Knowing how to play chess doesn’t make one Bobby Fischer; depth of knowledge, adeptness of skill, and support determine potential for success.
-
Sales is only a numbers game when there is no possibility for improvement of the means (conversion means) that yield the “numbers.” Put another way: whenever there’s an answer to the question(s) about how to improve the conversion process or ratios in order to increase profit, sales is not just a numbers game.
Be able to improve
You can’t expect improvement without doing something differently. The place to start is with 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. If you’re resistant to learning and change, the course to improvement could feel uncomfortable to you. So, ask yourself if you’re willing to change how you approach selling. If you're not, how do you expect sales improvement to occur?
If you're determined to improve your sales, you'll be excited to have Steven as your guide to greater success.
Sales is Dynamic
-
Technology / Resources
-
Software applications | Internet services | Customer reviews | Devices
-
Business / Buyer practices
-
Availability and use of data
-
Market | Industry | Decision-maker profile | Economic | Varieties of news
-
Economic conditions and forecast
-
Evolution of competition
-
Perceived value
-
Sales practices and techniques
-
Peripheral selling | Conversion nutriment | Use of LPs (leverage points)
Do you have want sales requires?
Sales requires...
-
an ability to prospect and quality (validate) sales potential
-
an ability to engage prospective clients
-
an ability to manage pursuits
-
an ability to inspire and lead prospects through a process
-
an ability to effectively communicate
-
an ability to coordinate activities and timing
-
an ability to identify sales potential
-
an ability to problem-solve
-
an ability to retain customer...
-
...among several other abilities.