The 7 Critical Elements to Sales Success
Selling is one of those things that most CEOs think if they hire their team with a good resume of experience, poof…they can sell. How’s that workin’ for ya?
That has been a badly failing method for as long as I have been in sales so lets talk about the B2B Sales Playbook of success. What does it really take?
- The very first thing is hiring right. Easier said then done. What criteria are we using? How are we finding our candidates? How are we interviewing? Are we using an assessment to help and if so which one? Quick tip. Look for people already on the job. Great salespeople are not out looking for work, they always have another potential job lined up because they are an asset not a liability.
- Train them the way you want them trained. Don’t rely on what they learned before. Teach them your method, the way you want them to sell. If they haven’t worked before, even better no bad habits. Get a true training process in place. There are a few good ones out there. (email me for more information on this).
- Use a repeatable and trackable sales process. The key word here is ‘repeatable’. When everyone adopts the same sales process, there is a common language that is understood, not just by sales, but by the whole organization. This is also important for managing the team and coaching the team to success.
- Motivation is individualized, not one size fits all. People are people and are motivated by different things. Is money a motivator? Sure but is it the only one? Don’t assume want motivates one will motivate another.
- Your Sales Leader is the Critical Link to Sales Success. Being a sales manager/leader is one of the hardest jobs in sales. It is also the critical link to sales success. Unless the sales manager has with all the tools he or she needs to easily manage the business, the whole performance of the sales organization will suffer.
- True and critical tracking methods. Complete integration with your CRM delivers the optimum information for you and your sales people. Without true data it becomes nearly impossible to eliminate failure and repeat success.
- The ability to Forecast Sales Properly. Sales forecasting for most companies leaves a lot to be desired. It is a guessing game of percentages that some piece of business will close. If you have to and actually need to forecast more closely, a process for the sales funnel needs to be adapted.
The key to all of this is your sales leader. Do you have the right one? Better find out. Here is a place you can go: www.SalesLeadersAlliance.com. There is lots of good information there.
