Effective Sales Execution, Strategy, Messaging, Training, Management

Your Father's Sales Process...with a Twist

There's a rekindled debate going on about a tired topic: sales process. With new emphasis on the buying process and alignment and technologies driving process and sales enablement, the whole subject matter has become somewhat academic and fairly complex. It's enough to cause minds to close and eyes to glaze over.

After all, as one results-minded VP of Sales put it, "All we really want to do is sell more stuff!" And that is the point.

But top producing sales individuals, teams and successful organizations get there today by doing what the best have always done but with special attention to a new level of detail. A twist, if you will - a cognitive variation on a focused theme that today makes all the difference between success and mediocrity.

It involves the actions in and around P3, which is highlighted in my recent article The 4 P's of Enterprise Selling. It's about the quality of sales engagement, for the rep and prospect. I call it Opportunity Engagement - engaging qualification, probing and presentation of ideas. In fact, this is your father's sales process, only now you've got to do it better than he was ever required.

The Next Sales Generation
I literally do talk about this stuff with my children. I have 2 top-producing sons actively working for top tier sales organizations. They have been the recipients of sought-after sales advice and unsolicited Dad-lectures on sales process clarity, messaging nuance, probing discovery, qualification scorecards, activity metrics, forecast accuracy, motivational mindset, partner relationships and sundry other keys to sales effectiveness. Between weekly conference calls, breakfasts or lunches, I teach and preach sales best-practices and see great results with them and clients.

But a pattern has emerged in this modern era. If not a process makeover, I'm seeing the need for a refocus in the area of Opportunity Engagement; that is, those early sales cycle calls or meetings where ideas, agendas, needs and information collide.

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Qualify, Qualify, Qualify

In addition to good probing skills during the early stages of the sales cycle, qualification skills are fundamental to effective selling. Many a deal has moved down the sales cycle commanding people resources, time and money only to find that the prospect is not fully qualified.

I find this a problem in even the most technically savvy and sophisticated Silicon Valley enterprise sales organizations. In our rush to sell and close, we make qualification assumptions only to be surprised later. Like the "Location, Location, Location" mantra in the real estate industry, "Qualify, Qualify, Qualify" is a fundamental principle in effective selling.

In terms of sales prospect qualification, early in all sales situations, know the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. A simple way to track all aspects of effective qualification is to simply track those 6 Qualifying points. Let's break it down.

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42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness 2nd Edition, 2013, by Michael Griego

This popular book provides the keys to sales excellence in today's challenging world. These tools have been taught to thousands of profession salespeople, sales managers and executives from Silicon Valley startups to global Fortune 500 companies.