Discounting should only happen when comparative value is received in return, as nearly 60 percent of World-Class Sales Organizations agree. Without an agreement that stipulates the buying organization should provide something, such as an extended agreement, sales organizations risk opening a door that allows customers to dictate the terms alone. The real win is in finding the catalyst to the customer’s actualization of goals – the solution that ties to customer objectives and delivers against it.
5. It is all about having the right timing. This statement is related to the notion that winning is about luck. While some may ascertain there are favorable events that advance sales forward, success is in no way based off of luck. Similarly, while there is definite value in appropriate timing, it isn’t everything. The real best practice is in understanding where the customer is in the decision process and tailoring responses or actions to that timeline. The best practice is in maintaining an approach that affords both buying and selling organizations flexibility.
6. Execution is more important than strategy. As noted before, all activity is not good activity. In the study, 88 percent of World-Class Sales Organizations agreed that they have a disciplined process they consistently use to pursue all large deals. Only 35 percent of all other respondents agreed to the same statement. In addition, 87 percent of these organizations collaborate regularly across departments to manage strategic accounts while only 38 percent of remaining organizations agreed. It is better to have a clearly articulated path that leads to organizational objectives than executing a shotgun plan of attack.
7. We need to either be focused on cutting costs or making investments. The real priority when it comes to affecting the bottom line is to make educated decisions about where to focus resources and efforts. Cutting costs when and where possible is still a practice in the best interest of profitability,but it can’t be relied on to save the organization’s revenue. Top-line growth will come from the focused investment of resources and from decisions that have been validated as the right choice for the organization.
8. Just sell value. A better statement is: sell what’s valuable to the customer. Leaders need to provide specific instructions to focus on the customer’s needs. The sales force should always be working at solving a customer’s need or obtaining an objective. In the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, 91 percent of World-Class Sales Organizations agreed that they clearly understood customers’ issues before proposing a solution. Only 46 percent of the rest of respondents agreed to the statement. Unearthing the customer’s concept in each sales opportunity provides more visibility into the actions required that will win the business.
9. These guys have it a lot easier than when I was a front line salesperson. Perhaps some aspects of the front-line sales job have improved, but the vast expansion in technological capabilities has added to the volume of responsibility of today’s salesperson. The competition has grown steeper, thanks to organizations retaining top talent. Technology has improved, exponentially increasing the amount of available information to prospects. Today’s salesperson is in a race against time, against a library of information that needs to be distilled into useful data, and against competing salespeople that are after the same objective.
10. Cross selling will yield quick results. It takes the right combination of credibility and expertise to pull off a successful cross sell or up sell, but timing must be up to the customer or the act can be an obvious ploy to secure more dollars. Cross selling may not always yield quick results especially when the customer organization may not be ready for a new initiative. Dropping the Fiction from Practice Many of these half-truths have worked their way into the sales organization’s make up, but can be dispelled when leadership trains its eye on the best practices of industry leaders. As companies continue to chart their own paths, they will need to remain discerning of the often-hyped, commonplace practices that exist today.
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