My thought partner, Lahat Tzvi, and I were having our monthly conversation today. We started discussing much of what we see about the “secrets to sales success.” We both see guru’s posting the determining secret to success. Somehow that secret is related to what they sell. They make claims about improving objection handling, improving closing, more effective discovery, better prospecting, better value creation, winning deal strategies, high impact sales calls, better…….
The perspective is, “Master this one thing and you will double your win rate or improve your ability to hit plan or maximize your comp.”
These things are important——rather, all these things are important.
And that’s the problem. We can’t choose to do only one part of the job. We can’t choose to excel in one part of the job, ignoring all other parts of the job. We have to do the whole job, we have to master each element of the job in order to maximize our performance.
All these things must be done for us to achieve our goals. Focus on any one, neglecting the others, causes us to fail. For example one sales person at a client happens to be outstanding in prospecting. He continues to prospect and find new opportunities–but he doesn’t take those opportunities further, he doesn’t spend the time he needs to qualify and move those through the buying process to closure–and his responsibility is full cycle sales. Another person on the team is great at working deals. She has a high win rate, great sales results. You would think she’s making her number, but she isn’t–she’s not pursuing the volume of deals she needs to make her number, she hates prospecting—again, she has full cycle responsibility.
We can’t just do the parts of the job we enjoy the most, or the parts that are easiest, we have to do the full job!
There’s another aspect to understanding this. Executing some parts of the job very well allows us to do other parts of the job much more effectively. For example, it’s very difficult to do high impact prospecting if we are lousy at deal management. What we learn in managing deals well, gives us the knowledge and experience to more impactfully prospect (which might cause us to rethink some of our SDR strategies.). Also, managing deals very well, changes our win rates, impacts our pipeline dynamics, and our prospecting.
All the parts of managing customers through their buying cycles, growing our business with those customers, how we acquire new customers are inter-related. Failing to recognize the interacting systems (there’s that word!), their interrelationships, and how to balance our efforts across the entire system adversely impacts our ability to perform.
By analogy, even if I buy the very best road bike, with the latest in electronic shifting, carbon fiber frame and wheels, won’t be the reason I place highly in the next century ride I compete in. Even, all the workouts and hill climbs I do to build my strength and endurance, by itself, won’t be the reason I place highly in that ride. Both the bike and my practice contribute, but my tapering the week before the race, my nutrition the night before, the morning, and throughout the race, my ability to find riders I can draft behind, my strategy through the race–all taken together impact my ability to win or place highly in the race.
High impact selling is a set of interrelated subsystems. Our success is based on how effectively we execute each of those subsystems and how we put all of these together. Whether we are full cycle or we specialize, for example SDRs, AEs, AMs, Specialists; we have to look at all the parts, but how all the parts interrelate and impact each other.
And when we look at these things a a complete system, because of the interrelationship and interaction, what this systems view creates is always greater than the sum of the parts.
Afterword: This is the AI discussion of this post. I’m often surprised at how these characters can articulate the key points far better than I can write about them. It leverages the example I use in bike racing far better than I do. They bridge that example into the core issues we face, as sellers, very nicely.
Enjoy!
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