Jill Konrath has a fantastic post and video, Being Good At Sales Is A Choice. Be sure to read it, it’s a perfect complement to this post (Jill, thanks for letting me riff off your concept).
What is Good Selling?
Is it making your numbers? Absolutely, that’s your job. Making your numbers requires you to not only be good at selling, it requires good selling.
Good selling is really all about the customer. It makes sense, if there were no customers, how could we sell–good or bad?
Good selling puts the customer at the center of everything we do. It involves us finding the right customers and focusing on them, not wasting our time or the prospects’ time by calling on those outside our sweet spot.
It focuses on understanding the customer, their business, what they are trying to achieve, both organizationally and individually.
It helps the customer identify opportunities to improve, change, and grow.
Good selling is about establishing trust, credibility, and engagement. We know the easiest ways to do this is to focus on what they care about, to demonstrate our understanding of their business and how to improve it, to meet each and every commitment we make.
Good selling involves creating value in every interchange, helping the customer learn, helping them understand how to be successful in solving their problems. Helping them justify our solutions to management by demonstrating how we help them achieve our goals.
Good selling is about making our numbers–but realizing the only way we make our numbers is by helping the customer make their numbers.
We choose Good Selling in the way we engage and work with our customers every day.
We choose to be successful both through being Good At Selling and through Good Selling.
What choices are you making?
David, thanks for the reference to Jill’s post. Both posts were great and I agree with them 100%. But here is what I would like to get your thoughts on. I have been selling for 25 years and have worked in banking, software technology, motorsports and digital marketing. I enjoyed all of them as they forced me to change my game every time, keeping me sharp and challenging me in new ways. My foundation for selling is networking and building relationships. Now, I am working in the IaaS/DRaaS cloud vertical and working for a small player. So, now I find myself challenged with a brand that is growing but not established. In an industry that is known for researching new technology, but staying with the status quo. While being in an vertical (cloud) that has not yet “crossed the chasm” and we are looking for Innovators and Early Adopters to grow our revenue, which means, lots of insight and qualifying going on looking for the right fit. So, we have 3 “waves” going on. First, there is me working to learn the industry, build insight, understand how I can solve the problems of my prospects and continue to pique their interest. Secondly, there is my company transitioning from a focus on the SMB market to mid-enterprise with a new website, messaging and collateral being developed. Third, is the industry itself that is consistently moving and adjusting based on growing cloud adoption. So, what’s my question? Your advice on how to navigate the “waves” of change. I am willing to learn, but sometimes feel like I am not focusing on the right “wave”. Hopefully, this rant makes sense!
Pat: You’ve covered a huge amount here. It’s probably better that I provide a response off line, directly to you. Thanks for reaching out. Regards, Dave