Tweet

Competencies to increase the Velocity of your Sales Cycle and to Up Your Bottom Line

Guest post by: Bob Urichuck

Article Overview: Now with a fantastic attitude and appropriate goal driven sales behaviors, you also need the competencies of your profession just as a lawyer or doctor needs them for theirs. Do you have the appropriate sales competencies to increase the velocity of your sales cycle and Up your bottom line? Well, you can develop your competencies almost anywhere. As salespeople, you can develop your competencies from reading books, in class training, on the job, being coached or through trial and error. You could join Professional Sales Associations, and in some countries like Canada, you can even get certified as a sales professional.

Competencies to increase the Velocity of your Sales Cycle and to Up Your Bottom Line

Now with a fantastic attitude and appropriate goal driven sales behaviors, you also need the competencies of your profession just as a lawyer or doctor needs them for theirs. Do you have the appropriate sales competencies to increase the velocity of your sales cycle and Up your bottom line?

Well, you can develop your competencies almost anywhere. As salespeople, you can develop your competencies from reading books, in class training, on the job, being coached or through trial and error. You could join Professional Sales Associations, and in some countries like Canada, you can even get certified as a sales professional.

The competencies that salespeople need are numerous but boil down to human interaction, communication and relationship building. Gone are the traditional days of the slick, hit and run feature and benefit dumps.

Why? Because every buyer has been educated by salespeople in the past and buyers have created their own sales system to maintain control over them. Keep in mind that sales is the oldest profession in history and buyers see more salespeople in a day than salespeople see buyers. Buyers know that you have been trained and in turn salespeople have trained buyers. Buyers can predict your next step and they know all of your techniques.

Now it is time to change since traditional and consultative selling methods no longer work on the sophisticated buyers of today‘s new economy. It is now a clear-cut case of being professional and following a "Buyer Focused", selling system if we want to increase the velocity of your sales cycle, increase your revenues and your margins to up you bottom line.

A buyer focused selling system is a step by step approach to primarily gaining the buyer's trust. Once that trust has been established it is essential to set the ground rules of interaction based on honesty and not wasting time.

A sales person must then qualify the buyer by determining his/her emotional needs - pains or pleasures, type of budget allocated, and his/her decision making timing and process.

Following the steps of this Selling System allows the sales person to first qualify and then determine if their product or service can help this prospect. If the prospect does not qualify, the sales person should be honest and inform the prospect accordingly, as set out in the ground rules established earlier.

The potential buyer will appreciate this straight forward approach and a more trustworthy relationship will be established. This admirable approach to sales will likely lead to referrals and perhaps a call back at another time, not to mention the time saved from doing a presentation to an unqualified prospect.

However, if the prospect does qualify and the sales person has a solution to most of their particular needs, it is a green light to proceed with a prescription. A prescription is not a full blown presentation, but one specific to the identified buying motivators, budget and timeframe to the decision maker(s) when they are ready to make a decision.

Prior to presenting the prescribed solutions, the sales person re-enforces the ground rules set out earlier and then proceeds with a summary to ensure nothing has changed. Solutions, including features and benefits to each buying motivator identified, are presented one at a time with buyer confirmation after each solution is presented.

Through the prescription process the sales person will have the opportunity to measure the buying pulse of the buyer and make any necessary adjustments. When done correctly, it will lead to a close.

The most effective question to finalize a sale is:" What would you like me to do next?" You then empower the prospect to buy and close the deal for you.

In order to master the this "buyer focused" Selling System, a sales person must discard old selling habits in exchange for new sales behaviors.

A new approach to buying and selling requires effort and perseverance but in no time you will master the system. The overall sales cycle will be shortened, your sales will increase, and you will up your bottom line.

However you cannot become competent in this Selling System unless you have supporting walls and a strong foundation from which to work.

Without a "buyer focused" selling system, salespeople are working on a hit and miss basis. They are wasting time and not getting the results they could be getting. They become a slave to the Buyer's System.

A professionally trained salesperson, who follows a proven selling system, is a very powerful tool in any organization.

Remember, sales is the bloodline to every organization. Without sales, there are no transactions. Without transactions, there is no revenue and without revenue, the organization would not exist and no one would have a job.

The world revolves around sales. Buyers are everywhere. What are you doing to help them buy?

Now is the time for you to demonstrate the appropriate buyer focused sales competencies to get the bottom line results you and your organization require in this new economy of buyers.

Related Articles
  Increasing the Velocity of Your Selling Cycle
  Targeting for Velocity Selling Cycles in a New Economy
  Traditional Sales Training is a Waste of Time and Money!
  Sales Training, without supporting Sales Management Training,
  A Velocity Selling System that is as Simple As ABC
  6th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture
  Want to UP Your Bottom Line Quickly in Today’s New Economy of Buyers?
  Benchmarking your Core Competencies
  10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture
  The Triple Bottom Line and Talent Mangement
  180 and 360 Degree Assessments for the Sales Force
  Easy Way to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
  Building an Effective Talent Management System
  Sales Core Competencies
  Is 87% of Your Sales Training Investment Wasted?
  8 Strategies to Guarantee Success in Cold Calling
  What is good selling?
  Consistent Sales Growth
  Three Stages of a Sales Agent
  Standardized Marketing Metrics and Organizational Singularity

Article Tags: Sales coach, Sales Consultant, Sales Management Training, Sales Motivation, Sales Speaker, Sales Trainer, Sales Training



Related Forum Posts
Hi from Adelaide Australia - Hi guys and gals my name is Dave Gilbert and i am a Sr Partner at Velocity Marketer a joint US and Australian company that runs Kooiii.com. I have been a Marketer, Web entrepreneur/developer and search technologist for the last 15 years specializing in SEO,SEM,SMO .
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: Web Business Podcast is LIVE! :) - Bottom of each post would be good. That way they either already listened to the podcast or they have decided they aren't going to, and might click the ads.
Happy Worker as of Dec 31 2007 - Here's mine... I'm now off to make an offering to the business planning gods for their help in getting to these goals & beyond. To the combined success of Prophets 2 Profits! ----------------------------------------- 1) Corporate a) Retail - Sales reps covering all major markets (1M or more) - Retail product launch plan - 1 more retail release (TBD) b) The Toy Agency - Systems for: o Creative process o Pricing o Manufacturing o Logistics - Marketing agency strategy in place - 1 new customer every 2nd month (5 new customers); 1 of which will be rev of >= 500K/year c) Business - Creative talent pool management strategy & process - Outsourced and/or weekly bookkeeping - Monthly budgeting & forecasting - Better banking organization (Line of Credit, CCs, automate billing for appropriate vendors) - Team total of 5 - Larger office d) Web site - Daily updates - Start of separation of Blog/TTA/Retail 2) Personal - Most weekends “off”! - Entirely separate personal finances; basic personal financing plan - Family….?


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Why Use an Advertising Agency

Selling with Humor (and a Sorry Butt)

Life, Conflict and Work

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.