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What Is Your Sales Process?

Guest post by: Joe Ippolito

Article Overview: To improve salespeople's performance, the first task is to help them discover that they just might not be as good as they think they are, and then train them to be as good as they thought they we

What Is Your Sales Process?

To improve salespeople's performance, the first task is to help them discover that they just might not be as good as they think they are, and then train them to be as good as they thought they were. I have rarely met salespeople who have not thought of themselves as being good. When I ask what makes them good, they will often answer, "I am great at establishing relationships," "I am a closer," "I am aggressive," or "I know the industry!" I then ask them what it is about their sales process that makes them so good and differentiates them from their competition. They usually have difficulty answering that question.

For example, I recently received a prospecting call and was curious to evaluate his sales process over the phone. He launched into a pitch about what he did. When finished, I asked him how he was personally doing. He told me he was doing great, which prompted me to test him. I told him that we were "all set and didn't have any budget available right now." He asked if he could follow up in three months. I told him no problem.

How could he have actually demonstrated that he was doing great? He could have applied techniques that would establish trust and rapport in the first minute of the call. Hint, it's not asking "How are you today?" He could have employed a questioning strategy to uncover my buying motives. He could have effectively responded to the standard "all set" and "money is not in the budget" blowoffs. He could have known how to test whether my permission to follow up was legitimate or just another way to make him disappear.

He thought he was doing great. But it was from his limited frame of reference. When this salesperson doesn't do well, he will always blame external factors instead of looking at himself for ways to improve. External factors sound like, "The competition is entrenched," "Our prices are too high" or "We don't have the right products."

I remember when I was 8 years old playing the drums on my mother's pots and pans. I thought I was a really good too, until I began taking drum lessons. I then came to understand that I wasn't as good as I thought I was.

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Article Tags: management training, sales training



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