Sales Process Drives Revenue
Competitor proliferation & differentiation are the two dynamics that are impacting your ability to generate consistent, profitable revenue, according to sales guru Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling.
And Ram Charan, a business consultant that works with the senior executives at the likes of General Electric and Verizon Communications, says that he “began to see companies with good strategies, good technology, and good costs asking, ‘Why are we not getting better results?’”
He found that companies had been focusing on the “back end of the business: operations, accounting, finance, overhead. But the sales force had been neglected.”
Charan adds, “The sales function has traditionally been about execution. They get training to know the product, and they beat the competition on price.” But the world has changed. Copying a product has become easy to do. As a result, “It has become very hard to differentiate yourself in the eyes of the customer for business-to-business sales. So salespeople should not sell the product any more. They should find out what the customer needs.”
He continues, “Salespeople need to learn the business of the customer. They need to learn how to ask the right questions. They need to have analytical skills to diagnose a customer’s business.”
Yes, Mr. Charan is correct. Something is very wrong in the world of selling. As a sales force development company, we’ve known this for a long time.
What are you doing to address these issues? Do you have a training program in place? Are your people still using sales strategies and tactics that were developed for a buying environment that no longer exists?
If so, our SalesCoach online training program might be just the resource you need to get your people out of the selling “Dark Ages” and equip them with the tools they need to make a big impact on both your top line and bottom line this year.
Introduce your sales teams to the Common Sense Selling process that’s been implemented successfully by thousands of salespeople worldwide.
It’s effective and affordable, and comes with our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Whether or not sales training is on your radar screen at the moment, this is a program you need to look at.
