Salespeople fall into 5 distinct profiles: (a) Hard Worker (b) Challenger (c) Relationship Builder (d) Lone Wolf (e) Reactive Problem Solver. Of these, Challengers perform the best in complex sales & Relationship builders perform the worst.
- Teach
- Teaching requires intensive pre-call planning to understand the company’s strategic objectives and competitive landscape as well as the individual’s role
- Use a deep understanding of a customer’s personal and business value drivers to bring unique, ongoing, strategic insight that reframes the customer’s thinking about how they can compete more effectively (ex: increase revenue, lower cost, or lower risk)
- Commercial teaching: (i) Warmer – demonstrate empathy and two-way conversation while laying out your customer’s key challenges, potentially strengthened with benchmarking data (ii) Reframe – share a major unrecognized problem or opportunity (iii) Rational Drowning – intensify degree and urgency (iv) Emotional Impact – make the intensity personal (v) New Way – framework for addressing problem tied to your value proposition (vi) Solution / Implementation Map – outline solutions linked to teaching points
- Tailor
- Garner consensus, esp. via customer advocates, for a purchase decision across the prospect company’s team
- Tailor by working you way down from industry to company to role to individual
- Develop value plans with the customer
- Take control
- Be assertive (neither aggressive nor passive) in securing you desired next step
- Openly pursue goals to overcome customer risk aversion
- Be comfortable taking about money
- Preempt objections
- Press for expanded access to key stakeholders in exchange for continuing the dialogue; otherwise, cut bait
- Understand the customer’s decision making process (and, when needed, teach them how to buy)
Sales management (incl. coaching)
- Success in implementing any change initiative, including Challenger, requires having front line sales managers to be on board
- When hiring sales managers, use “live fire” role-play / simulation to assess (i) integrity (ii) reliability (iii) listening (iv) selling skills (v) coaching (vi) resource allocation (vii) innovative deal problem solving.
- Coaching means asking and guiding (rather than telling and doing) with a focus on behaviors rather than outcomes
- Give managers something to coach to – ex: a sales process aligned coaching guide
- Shift focus of coaching from low and star performers to core performers
Other:
- Investments in brand building, product development, and customer service are the first, not the last, step in building customer loyalty
- Reps should have tools to create action plans
- Pair experiential training with behavioral certification programs to reinforce learning over time
- “If you truly want to build a “customer-centric” organization, then you’re actually going to have to build an insight-centric organization”