Strategic Human Capital Insights

Increase Success with a Multifunctional, Disciplined Sales Methodology

The sales function is the front line of the marketplace and is strategically critical. Keeping the sales function aligned with strategic goals will significantly impact growth.  

Because we are focused on WHAT, WHY, and HOW information, it is imperative to have a strategic sales methodology approach that is multifunctional and multifaceted – requiring many layers of information. Here is a breakdown of the PSP approach to accelerate your sales growth, focusing on the layers of information needed to implement and sustain a disciplined sales methodology.

We hope you enjoyed our blog series on Sales & Business Development.  This is the tenth and final blog in our series. In case you missed the other blogs, you can view them here.

The fourth quarter is the strategic planning time for many companies.  This is a perfect time to review your sales force competencies.  For many organizations, the sales function is the front line into the marketplace. Keeping the sales function aligned with strategic goals can and does have a significant impact on growth. So how do you ensure your current sales function is robust, ready and upskilled to accomplish the task? When is it appropriate to determine if it is time for learning & development to play a part in accelerating strategic growth goals? 

The DiSC® Profile is a very powerful tool used in organizations globally. The DiSC® Profile assesses people for their underlying personality styles. The model presents a methodology for understanding the feedback from the DiSC® Profile.  The key elements that make up personality and motivators can be used to manage effective interpersonal relationships, manage the sales process at a very personal level, and understand how to create highly effective client business plans.  That information breathes life into and gives dimension to effective client business plans.

3 Ways to Incorporate DiSC® into Your Client Business Planning Process to Increase Sales

This is the eighth blog in in our Sales & Business Development blog series. In case you missed the other blogs, you can view them here.

Client Business Plans are one of the most critical sales business tools. A big problem with these plans is they often neglect to identify the most important information about the client – the qualitative data! What do I mean?

The Total Client Buying Center (TCBC)

I’ve seen countless business plans that identify the names of people within the buying center.  But, remember, a name is only a name without an operating context associated with the name.  I will often hear salespeople say, “I have the company organization chart.”  So what!  A name on an organization chart is often meaningless.  It is simply a ‘what’ data point.   There is so much more to this name that a great salesperson must know to truly understand the buying landscape:

“Successful relationship selling is not just a list of activity items.  It is a thinking person’s occupation, requiring a plan, a process with targets and smart activity, and integrated skills measured against the only metric indicator of success – The Client Business Plan.” - Joanne Flynn, “The Relationship Management Model”©

Sales and Business Development is essential to look at from a holistic perspective, starting with: 

• Competitive Landscape and Marketing Approach
• Product and How to Differentiate with the Highest Impact
• Activity & Sales Tools / Skills to Navigate through Client Conversations

All three must be part of a robust relationship management process that is critical for sales and business development success. Skip any of the three concepts, and you will build flaws into your business development program. All this information is absolutely necessary to develop the key management tools to monitor and measure success. It all comes together in The Client Business Plan.

Is it Activity or is it Smart Activity?

A big misconception regarding client management is that activity is the measure of sales success.  Activity is an easy metric, and today numerous apps can monitor that activity.  However, the only important activity metric is smart activity.  The only way to determine and assess smart activity is relative to an evaluation context that determines if each activity is the best use of the salesperson’s time. Only then can we truly evaluate if an activity is a smart activity. The basis of this evaluation is the Client Business Plan.

This is the sixth blog in our Sales & Business Development series. In case you missed the other blogs, you can view them here.

The Essentials

Questions are the most important tool in your sales toolkit.  Never underestimate the importance of questions.  They help you navigate through conversations and maximize the information gathering opportunity.  Asking great questions requires mental preparation, mental agility and precise communication skills.  Before you can ask great questions, you need to think of the question’s purpose.

• Why are you asking the questions?  
• What is the best question to use?
• Exactly what do you want to gain with this question?
• Who are you asking?
• What is their perspective? What are their goals? What are their issues, challenges and/or problems?
• How can you phrase your questions for maximum advantage?

Questions – The Power Tool in the Sales Toolkit 

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL PRODUCT LEVELS: Where the sales battle is won or lost!

This is the fourth blog in in our Sales & Business Development blog series.  In case you missed the other blogs, you can view them here.

Your product / solution is not one-dimensional.  The complex relationship selling process often makes your product elastic, meaning different things to different people in your client buying center.  When you think about your product, think about the multi-dimensional product levels from basic commodity to differentiated product.

3 Steps to Matching & Positioning Product for Maximum Impact

We hope you've enjoyed our Sales and Business Development blog series so far. In case you missed the other two blogs, you can view them here. This blog is the third in our series, and will help you understand the importance of client differentiation.

1. It’s All About the Client  

When a client has a problem, issue or ‘hook’ requiring a solution, they look for one thing: simplicity. They are looking to "break-down" an existing problem and seek a solution that will satisfy their needs and take their business forward. Your job is to understand the specific business issues and then provide a solution that will address their issues in very concrete, tangible ways.  Here is where you will need two key things:

1. A complete understanding of the client, the business and their aspirations for the future and blockers that will get in the way and hinder future growth
2. A thorough and detailed understanding of your product / solution and how to position that product appropriately so it presents a business answer to client growth

If you can’t define it – you haven’t ‘tangibilized’ it.

What does 'tangibilizing' mean? Tangibilizing’© is the process of taking ambiguous language and precisely defining the terms through the questioning process. You can then completely describe the client's situation in concrete, defined, specific terms. 

The Basics of the Relationship Sales Process

In the relationship sales process, clients want you to be a confidante and resource who understands and is working to help solve their business challenges.  They are looking for someone to advise and partner with them, moving up the trust ladder together.  They don’t want to feel like they are ‘being sold’!  (Clients can definitely tell if you're there just for a quick sale.) If you want to succeed at relationship selling, everything about your approach must reflect this proposition.