Many of business owners look to advertising as if it can provide all of their new clients.  This is a fallacy, an old wives tale.  Advertising, whether it is on the web, in print, TV, radio, or any other form, can only provide a steady (sometimes slow) stream of new clients to your business.  Let’s suppose for a moment that the above statement is factual, if the statement is true, it leads me to ask one major question;

How then can I add more clients to my business at a rate that will allow me to sustain or grow my business?

While owning my advertising businesses I have come to realize that most small business owners lack the ability to market.  Or maybe I should say they lack the knowledge to market, because everyone has the ability given the correct tools and ideas.  This has lead me down the path of training my advertisers how to market!  Thereby insuring that when the advertising works they know how to take full advantage of it.

What do I mean by the above statements?  Well let’s take a closer look.

All of us know between 150 to 250 people.  Don’t think so?  Take a minute put down your mouse and pick up a pencil and start writing.  Remember your brother, mother, father, sister, aunts, and uncles.  For that matter all your relatives, your spouse’s relatives, and all your friends.  Do you know any of their family (your friends).  Now all your work associates, all of your church associates, and who do you know in all the other clubs and organizations that you belong to?

I think you get the picture….You know allot of people.  Most of all your clients will know many people as well.  That is wonderful!  Why?  Why is it so wonderful?  Well let’s say you own a water skiing shop that specializes in all the water skiing equipment.  Your perfect client ultimately will love to water ski, and so will his friends.  Get the picture?  This is the law of attraction at its best.  If you love to do something you naturally attract individuals who also love to do the same things.

So if your advertising brings in one new individual to your business then you have a new market (150 to 250 friends, relatives, and business associates) of potential new clients.  All you have to do is figure out how to access and attract that market.

I am sure you are thinking to yourself, ya right Owen, you make it sound simple, but, how do you propose we do that?

Well now that you understand the basic concept come back to my blog in say a few days and I’ll start posting ideas to help you with the concept of penetrating into your client’s circle of friends and family.

Representing the Company Brand

Every company has a brand. That brand stands for something. It means something. One thing a brand does for a company is to separate it from its competitors. It differentiates. Great salespeople represent their company’s brand. They tell the story of what that brand means, what the company stands for, and how it is different. They understand how to use this differentiation to win deals.

If a salesperson can’t differentiate their offering in a crowded marketplace, they cannot pull themselves out of the pack to get the prospect or client’s attention. If they can’t explain what makes their brand better than the other offerings (and do so using real, true brand-defining differentiators), they cannot convince prospects that choosing them over their competitors will make a difference. Customers choose a brand because they believe what it stands for is better for them.

The downside to representing the company’s brand alone is that it is no longer enough.

Representing Your Brand

In addition to your company’s brand, you must have your own brand. You have to stand for something. What you stand for has to be different than the many salespeople that call on your prospects and compete for their attention and their business. It has to mean something more.

Your brand has to, in part, stand for the ability to create greater value for your customers. Your brand has to stand for doing what is right for the customer even when it is painful. If your brand doesn’t have a meaning, your company’s brand can’t mean anything  either . . . you are your company. And sometimes, when all of the entries in the multiattribute model spreadsheet are entered, the only thing that separates the deal winner from the deal loser is what your brand created. Did it create trust. Did it create a vision of a better outcome? Did it create the confidence that the customer’s business results will be achieved?

Conclusion

Like the other nine essential attributes and opposites, you have to develop your personal brand yourself. This whole series is truly about personal and professional development. Only you can and develop the skills necessary to deliver on your brand’s promise. You alone are responsible for your growth and development.

Thanks for joining me here and for giving me your attention. I have had these ideas sketched out on a to do list for longer than I care to remember. I have always wanted to write down and share these ideas, and I thank you for receiving them so warmly. I hope that these ideas have inspired you to think about the attributes that are essential to succeeding in sales today. Your list will almost certainly be different than mine. If you write a list, I challenge you to think about whether the attributes you believe are essential come with another side, if they are dichotomous. If you find that they are, develop both together.

Questions

1. What does your brand stand for?
2. How does your brand separate you from the pack?
3. What could your brand stand for? Who would you have to be for that brand to mean something?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

Sales Acumen

Acumen doesn’t mean knowledge. It means something more. It means having an insight, a perception, a sharpness. Great salespeople have sales acumen. They have the basic sales skill sets like overcoming buyer resistance, asking great questions, presenting solutions in the form of a dialogue, and obtaining commitment. But they also have something more than that; they know how all of these moving parts work together to make deals come together. It is something that is developed over time.

I liken it to the German word “fingerspitzengefuhl,” which translates to “finger tip feeling.” It is a sort of knowing what is happening everywhere all it once, without actually being there. It’s that sense that tells you “this isn’t working,” or “this is working,” or “I know when I leave they will discuss . . . ” This sales acumen is part of what helps the great salesperson to create deals that other sales people might not have been able to make. This skill is part of the art of sales that makes teaching others to sell so difficult.

There is nothing negative to possessing this skill, and the more the better. But by itself, it is no longer enough.

Business Acumen

Now more than ever, the salesperson is a business manager. It is no longer enough to possess the basic sales skills, even when coupled with sales acumen. Today, the salesperson is required to understand all general aspects of business.

They need a knowledge that competes with the industrial engineer in operations, the CFO in finance, and the Vice President of Human Resources in organization development and team dynamics. The great salesperson today will have the business acumen of a great general manager, and is just as comfortable using a spreadsheet to calculate the customer’s return on investment as he is orchestrating a team made up of members of both companies. This business acumen may not be as strong as their sales acumen, but he has to equal the business acumen of the general manager.

Conclusion

The only real dichotomy here is that a person may presently possess only one of these, sales acumen or business acumen. Both can (and must) be gained together over time. And the possession of both is the future of business-to-business sales.

Questions

1. When selling, are you uncomfortable with any subject that is generally not in the domain of general sales?
2. Do you rely too heavily on technical experts for even the most basic questions that your prospects ask about your product or service?
3. Do you speak and understand the general language of business?
4. What should you be doing to develop your business acumen?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

I Know My Business

Great salespeople know their business. They have a deep understanding of their products, their service offerings, and their company’s capabilities. They have a command of the features and benefits when they meet with their prospects. As you might imagine, this knowledge is critical in presenting ideas and solutions to prospects and customers. When a salesperson is really great, they understand how their product or service stacks up in the marketplace; they know their competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Great salespeople spend time studying their company, their business, and the competitive landscape.

What if a salesperson doesn’t know their business? Unfortunately, this is all too common. When a salesperson doesn’t have a deep understanding of their business and how their company competes, they struggle to make sales. They call on prospects that their business can’t legitimately serve, and they fail to answer their prospect’s questions in way that allows the prospect to move forward with them confidently. In short, they blow deals they might otherwise have won.

As with the prior seven essentials, knowledge of one’s own business comes with it’s own set of problems; by itself, it isn’t enough.

I Know My Customer’s Business

To succeed in sales today, a salesperson must have more than a deep knowledge and understanding of their own business. They must also have a deep knowledge  and understanding of their customer’s business.

To create value for their customers, the salesperson must have a an understanding of their customer’s business, how their customer competes in their market, and the challenges and opportunities they must address as a business. This knowledge allows the salesperson to to understand how their product or service can help to make the customer more competitive in their market. This is an enormous competitive advantage for the salesperson.

Some salespeople misunderstand this to mean that they have to do a massive amount of research about a company or an industry before they can begin calling on prospects. Like all real education, it is accumulated slowly, over a long period of time. You might call this experience or situational knowledge.

The best way to acquire this knowledge is sitting face-to-face with your prospects and customers. To do so you need two things. First, you have to have sincere desire to understand their business. Second, you have to have a great set of questions (a great set of questions not only helps you acquire the knowledge and understanding, it also demonstrates your sincerity . . . you prepared).

Conclusion

Great salespeople know their business. They also know their customer’s business. They use their sales calls and encounters to get an education about their prospect and client’s business, and they use this knowledge to create value for their customers–a real competitive advantage. Like our previous seven essential attributes, both are necessary to succeed.

Questions

1. Do you have a real practical working knowledge of your business beyond the features and benefits of your products and services?
2. Do you understand your company’s strategy and how it plans to compete and win in its marketplace? Do you understand how your offerings create value?
3. Have you spent the time to educate yourself on your customer’s business?
4. Do you know how they compete in their marketplace?
5. Do you understand the general challenges and opportunities with which they are confronted? The specific challenges?
6. Can you use the knowledge of your business + the knowledge of your customer’s business to help make your customers more competitive in their market?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

I promise this is not an episode of Theater of the Obvious. Of course the salesperson’s role is to obtain customers by selling outside their company. Or is it that simple? As this series has pointed out in a number of posts, the salesperson’s role is to create value for their customers and, by doing so, create value for their company (I know some people have this backwards. I am trying to change that fact).

Selling Outside

Great salespeople spend their time outside of their offices selling to prospects and clients. They take all the necessary actions to develop the network of contacts within their target prospects and their clients. They build these networks in order to succeed in creating value for their client. This means selling their ideas to cross-functional team members from purchasing to operations to finance. Great salespeople sell to contacts at any and all levels outside of their company. They understand their client’s internal politics, and they know how to play. They identify who within the organization is necessary to a achieving a successful outcome, who can obtain necessary resources, and who can move obstacles and roadblocks.

The trouble begins when the salesperson doesn’t take the same actions inside their own organization that they take outside their company.

Selling Inside

Creating value for clients requires buy-in from all kinds of people within the client organization. But it also requires buy-in from all kinds of people within your own company. Great salespeople treat their own organization like they treat their prospects and clients. They spend time understanding and developing the needs of the people within their own company. They understand that by working to develop the networks within their own organization they can bring together the necessary resources to create value for their clients.

Too many salespeople don’t believe that they need to sell within their own organization. What happens when you don’t sell within your own organization? Big trouble. First, your client expects you to be the strategic orchestrator managing the team of experts that produce the results you sold them. When this doesn’t happen, you lose the credibility you worked so hard to develop. Your client wants the result you sold them, and they expect you to help ensure that it is obtained. They want you in the thick of things with them when the challenges start.

Second, as a salesperson, you can rarely obtain the result for the client alone. If you have not spent the time developing the relationships with your internal team members in the same you would with an external team member, it is much more difficult to get them on board when you (and your client) need their help. When the issues arise and you really need your team, you spend a lot of time developing the communication channels after the fact (which may be too late). If the challenges are great, the accompanying urgency can create stress, and stress makes this communication more difficult and problematic.

Most of the development of the relationships inside your own organizations are the result of meaningful conversations with the people on your team to understand how you can make it easy to help each other, and then extending the common courtesies that all good relationships are built upon. These include honest communication, integrity, kept commitments, caring about people as individuals, and treating them with respect.

Conclusion

Sell inside your own organization with the same energy you sell outside of your own organization. Remember, you are the strategic orchestrator responsible for creating value for both your company and your clients. It isn’t enough to drop the orders off at the office; you have to ensure both parties succeed and both capture the value of the exchange that you sold. Your influence is the force for change both inside and outside!

Questions

1. Do you treat your own company like a prospect with a network of contacts that must be developed?
2. Do you develop the relationships within your organizations in order to help ensure that they have every opportunity to succeed for your clients?
3. How do you create value for your internal team?
4. Have you courted your team with lunch meetings, thank you cards, visible acknowledgment and appreciation for their effort?
5. When you internal team needs you do you treat them the same way that you expect them to treat your clients when your clients need them?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

Commissions

Great salespeople make great money. Many of them take a position in sales because it allows them to earn a compensation based (in part, at least) on their personal efforts and abilities. This compensation is almost always paid in the form of a commission or a bonus for production. Without using a calculator or a spreadsheet of any kind, most can tell you within a few dollars in one direction or another what their expected bonus is on a deal. Even though it’s not in fashion, nor is it popular to say, these individuals normally care about making money.

Great salespeople are able to create value for their company and for the customers they serve. Because they can create tremendous value, they know that they are entitled to capture some of the value they create–and so do their employers. But what if the salesperson did not care about earning commissions? Not always, but much of the time these salespeople don’t create enough value to know internally that they deserve commissions.

The dark side of this desire for money is when it it becomes the salesperson’s primary focus (and this is a really, really dark side).

Customer’s Success

The best salespeople understand that their commission is earned through helping customer’s succeed. Period. They have a strong desire to ensure that they deliver for their customers and clients, and they take responsibility for the client’s outcome after buying their products or service. When there customer has a serious problem or a  seemingly insurmountable challenge, the first call they make is to their salesperson. They call knowing that they have someone who will help to ensure that they get an outcome that helps them with their business results and their success.

Because they focus on their customer’s success, these salespeople build the trust and relationship that ensure lifetime customers. What if they didn’t care whether or not the customer succeeded? What if they didn’t care whether or not the customer got the desired outcome of their product or service? It’s been done, and I have seen it. These salespeople churn customers as fast as they gain them. Because they don’t care, the customer’s problems continue, often unaddressed. The customers leave, and they wait the few minutes it takes for another provider to show up with the same product or service. Then they ask enough questions to ensure that this new salesperson cares enough about them and their business to ensure they are successful.

The dark side here is that some salespeople turn into great customer service people. Their primary role is still to sell, and so they have to be able to orchestrate the efforts of their team on behalf of their client. (More about this in tomorrow’s post on Selling Outside vs. Selling Inside)

Conclusion

It isn’t possible to have two number one values. Only one of these can be first, and that decision will make the salesperson or it will undo them. If they put their commission first, that means that they will choose making a sale over making sure the customer succeeds. For a short time, they may make exceptional money. But their desire to put money first will eventually cost them more in client relationships, and ultimately, their earning potential.

By choosing their customer’s success as the highest value, they ensure that they keep their clients, they ensure repeat business, they build a long and credible list of references and the accompanying referrals, and they eventually earn more than the group who puts money first.

But make no mistake, both values are necessary!

Questions

1. Answer honestly. Have you ever mentioned your commission or bonus on a sales call? If you answered in the affirmative, you have an issue that must be immediately resolved . . . you are putting money first and your prospect knows it.
2. Are you too comfortable with the money you are making? Could you stand to improve your motivation for money and the accompanying motivation to get out and find prospects you can help to improve their results?
3. Are so customer-focused that no problem is too small for your attention?
4. Have you spent more time solving minor customer challenges instead of orchestrating the efforts of the team that your prospecting and sales pipeline are suffering?
5. Are you certain that the time you spend with your existing customers is valuable for them, or is it more valuable to you because it makes you feel like you are doing client-related work?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

Adaptable

Once you step through the prospect’s door there is no telling what you may encounter. The prospect could throw out concerns to test your responses and your ability to respond. Maybe he is a little adversarial because so many salespeople before you have wasted his time and has decided to make you prove your mettle before going too far. The prospect could also be faced with a business challenge that you and your company have never seen before, leaving you wholly unprepared.

The best salespeople have the ability to think on their feet. Regardless of whether the challenge is a difficult personality or a difficult business situation, great salespeople have the ability to adapt and respond in a way that allows them to gain credibility and move the sale forward. These salespeople have the ability to stay cool in the board room with 15 people firing (extremely) challenging questions at them in rapid fire succession.

What happens if you are not adaptable and you can’t think on your feet? You lose. But this essential attribute by itself is problematic. Too many salespeople with this attribute rely too heavily upon it, and so they do nothing to prepare.

Prepared

Preparedness comes with it’s own set of advantages. Developing a profile of the company, understanding their place in their industry or marketplace, finding some of their potential challenges and opportunities, and discovering the background of the contacts can help the salesperson develop opportunities they would not have otherwise. Before ever stepping foot into the board room for the final presentation, the prepared salesperson will have reached out to every contact to uncover their questions so as to have prepared responses (knowing that there will still be new challenging questions thrown at them). These salespeople use the pre-call planner with the same regularity and thoroughness a pilot uses the pre-flight checklist. This preparedness gives the salesperson confidence.

What happens when you are unprepared? You lose opportunities.

But preparedness can also be taken too far. Too many salespeople spend far too much researching the company before ever picking up the phone to schedule an appointment. They always feel that one more fact, one more news story, one more press release is going to give them the advantage they need to create value. It isn’t. This is simply call reluctance.

Conclusion

Great salespeople have to be adaptable. They also have to take the measures necessary to be prepared. Being brilliant under fire doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t also have the advantages and understanding that accompany preparedness. Equally, there are some things that cannot be anticipated; you will have to deal with what is thrown at you with confidence and quick-thinking. To succeed in sales you need equal parts adaptability and preparedness.

Questions

1. Do you love the thrill and challenge of thinking on your feet? Fine. Are you using your skill as a crutch so you don’t have to prepare?
2. What could you do to be better prepared for your next call? Your next presentation?
3. Are you spending more time researching the prospects at the top of your funnel than you spend actually attempting to get an appointment?
4. Are you afraid you don’t know enough to be able to respond well or to create value for the prospect during the sales encounter?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

If you have not seen the first three seasons of Mad Men, buy them from iTunes, go to the library and borrow them, or set up your DVR to record them. It is one of the best ever television shows on sales and selling. The main character, Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), is a great communicator. The character has a tremendous ability to communicate ideas that persuade the prospects and clients of his advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, as evidenced here.

The Great Communicator

One of the most valuable attributes a salesperson can possess is the ability to clearly and effectively communicate ideas. Great salespeople have this ability and the accompanying benefit of being able to use it to persuade or influence people. Salespeople with poor communication skills (both oral and written), have a tougher time making their message clear and lose the trust and confidence of their prospects.

What happens when a salesperson can’t come up with the words or the message that would influence the prospect to take action? A lost opportunity. What is the result when the great communicator with a mediocre product or service goes up against the poor communicator with a great product or service? The great communicator often wins.

But the dark side of this powerful attribute is that the great communicator uses this skill too much. Because they can speak, because they can entertain, and because they can tell a great story, they do. Heaven forbid they get too excited about their product or service; there is no stopping them. Because their skill is in speaking, they speak when they should do something else equally or more powerful.

The Great Listener

Listening is a form of communication with a more powerful impact than speaking. When you listen you convey they message that the person who is speaking is important and that what they have to say is interesting and important to you. Listening is one of the most powerful ways we communicate that we care about the other person and their ideas. The person speaking can see and feel that you are truly listening. This generates a trust and a confidence that is difficult to match by anything you might say.

What is the danger for those that don’t (or can’t) listen? They convey an important message too, one they may not mean to convey. Their message is: “What you have to say is not important enough for me to listen to.” Too often this is the curse of the great communicator: they are working on what they will say next instead of listening with the intention of of understanding and demonstrating that they care.

Conclusion

A great salesperson must possess the ability to communicate. This includes the ability to communicate that they care, which is done most effectively by listening. As in each of the prior the three essential attributes, this is a difficult balancing act.

One of my great mentors in sales had the ability to ask three or four questions on a sales call, saying very little, but expressing how much he cared by listening. He made more deals with fewer of his own spoken words than I believed was possible then (or now). At the time, I struggled to understand how he won deals without communicating our ideas or our value proposition. It took me years to learn that he communicated something far more important. Something he communicated without words.

Questions

1. How much time on a sales encounter do you spend speaking? How much listening?
2. Divide the first number by the second number. This is the Caring Ratio. If it is higher than 1, you are talking too much.
3. Are your speaking skills what they should be? Have you joined Toastmasters?
4. What is the message you are communicating when the prospect or client is speaking?
5. What could you do to convey a more powerful message when the client is speaking? Who would you have to be in order to convey that message?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

Willie Sutton, an infamous bank robber, was once asked why he robbed banks. Sutton replied: ” . . . because that’s where the money is.” It makes sense to me that, if you work in sales, you’d follow Sutton’s rule and call on the people who have orders that they could give you.

The challenge in B2B sales is that the best prospects are somebody’s client. They weren’t waiting around with an unmet need hoping that you would call on them someday. Odds are, when you call for the first time you are going to hear a “No.”

Persistent

The best salespeople in the world are persistent. They don’t easily take no for an answer. They are also resilient enough to hear “no” time and time again without ever being discouraged from making the next call . . . or calling that prospect back in the future (sometimes the not to distant future). Salespeople who aren’t persistent sometimes fall prey to the idea that they should spend time calling on easier targets, people who will easily agree to spend time with them. More often than not, these prospects don’t have orders to give them, or at least not the same volume of the real target prospects.

What happens when you are not persistent enough to continue to pursue the real targets? You end up with a haphazard approach to calling that never gains any traction with the client, and so never earn the right to compete for their business. You also miss the opportunities to catch them when they are dissatisfied and may be open to evaluating you and your company. If you sell downstream, you often end up with the smaller transactional clients that put you somewhere near the bottom of the board.

Respectful

Salespeople who aren’t respectful lose credibility with prospects quickly; they are too persistent, bordering on insistent. At the beginning of the sales process, we are often asking the prospect for his most valuable commodities: his time and attention. You have to at all times be respectful of your prospects needs, desires, and opinions. As soon as they sense that you are not, then they know you are not in this for their results and are instead in it for you.

The problems begin when this respect leads to one of the greatest delusions ever suffered by a salesperson: the delusion of the non-activity activity. Too often professional (yes, professional) salespeople accept the time objection as an activity. The client says something like: “Can you call me back next quarter?” The salesperson agrees. When asked, they say things like: “I am scheduled to call him next quarter.” When pressed, the salesperson will tell you that they are being respectful and this respect will blossom into the trusting relationship that lifetime customers are built on.

This is simply bullshit. Not taking any action is not an action. If not taking any action were an activity then those of us in sales management would have a metric for it, and we would track it with the same fervor that we track everything else that is activity.

Conclusion

To succeed in sales you need all the persistence of a bulldog while still being agreeable and respectful. Like the prior two posts, you must possess both attributes simultaneously. And like the prior posts, many of the challenges we face in sales are the result of a limited ability to create value for prospects. The reason you are waiting until next quarter to call is not that you believe that is going to gain you credibility with the prospect. Face it, the reason you are waiting is because you don’t have a great way to create value for the prospect in the meantime . . . if you did, we wouldn’t be able to keep you from the telephone. Here are some questions to struggle with:

1. How often do you accept “no” when you should persist?
2. Who do you have to be to persist when others accept no?
3. Do you have the skills to overcome objections (and “no”) in the most agreeable and respectful way, persisting politely and professionally.
4. Do you have a list of prospects in a tickler file that are only there because you accepted the non-activity activity of calling later?
5. Do you (really) have the ability to create value for the prospect on every sales encounter, regardless of whether they ever buy from you? What would you need to do? What tools would you need? What kind of a resource could you/should you be for your prospects?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com

No one will ever forget Blake’s admonition to the real estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross: “A-B-C. A-Always. B-Be. C-Closing.” Blake was the salesperson, brilliantly played by Alec Baldwin, sent to improve the sales results of a group of under-performing real estate salesmen. One of the reasons Baldwin’s character is so appealing on screen is that it so closely matched the sales behaviors of many salespeople in the past. This is what was taught and what was expected.

In 1988, Neil Rackham wrote a book called SPIN Selling. Rackham found a direct correlation between closing behaviors and sales. The more closing behaviors, the more sales . . . as long as the dollar amount and the risks were low. Rackham’s research showed the opposite to be true for larger sales: the higher the dollar amount of the sale, the more likely that closing behaviors would work against a sale.

Closer

Throughout the sales process, a salesperson has to ask for commitments. To succeed, a salesperson has to gain these commitments, including commitments to buy. Period. Too many salespeople now believe that closing behaviors are “old school,” or “too salesy.” I believe what these salespeople are trying to communicate is that they are uncomfortable with the sales behaviors of the past (and they should be). But what happens if you cannot gain commitments to buy? I’d like to tell you the answer is nothing, but in all likelihood what it leads to is a career change.

You can call it closing. You call it gaining commitment. Whatever you call it, it is a necessary and essential attribute of the salesperson.

Opener

There is far too much emphasis put on closing, and far to little placed on opening. In fact, as all of our markets have become saturated with competitors and the Internet has made all of the information about our products and services easily accessible, opening has become a greater challenge than closing. A great salesperson now must be able to open relationships with individuals and companies. They need to have the skill set that generates an interest and the ability to create value for the prospect at every stage of the sales process. These are “opener” skill sets.

Without appointments with new prospects, there is nothing to close. Opening relationships is a critical and essential attribute of the salesperson.

Conclusion

In my estimation, Rackham’s work is the most important work on sales effectiveness in the last 25 years. But it may be, in part, responsible for the lack of closing behaviors. Rackham never suggested there were no closing behaviors on the higher dollar sales, just that there were fewer. Rackham never recommended abandoning closing behaviors. The skill set that Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross insists upon should not be dismissed either. Maybe the way in which he recommends closing behaviors be used needs serious modifications, but in the end, closing is still necessary.

The real skill of sales professionals is to be able to create enough value at every interaction that asking for the commitment to move forward is natural and easily agreed to by the prospect.

Questions

1. Are you asking for a commitment to move forward during every sales interaction?
2. Does your sales process include the ability to generate enough interest and enough value for the prospect that the commitment to move forward is easily agreed to and natural?
3. Are you asking for commitments before you have generated enough value to deserve the advance?
4. Are you opening more prospect opportunities than are necessary for you and your company to succeed?
5. Are you spend more time opening the opportunities in your sales funnel than you are working on closing the existing opportunities in your pipeline?

This whole 10 part series was put together by S. Anthony Iannarino, please check out his blog for more great info Thesalesblog.com