Sales Heroics Are Actually Sales Failures!

All of us revel in stories of the deal where we took dramatic actions and ultimately won–hopefully not by discounting.  We get an Adrenalin rush in talking about this things that we did to pull the opportunity from the ashes and into the victory column.  When we get together with our colleagues, over beer, we seek to outdo each other in stories about our heroics.

I’d be less than honest, if I didn’t admit to doing the same.  These stories are fun, we enjoy sharing them and laughing.

But the reality is that sales heroics represent a failure on our parts.  Organizations that constantly win, only through sales heroics and last ditch efforts, are failing systemically!

In reality, great selling looks more like the old “Maytag Serviceperson” commercials.  Great selling is about consistent execution of our sales process, it’s about consistently doing the things that work and not doing those things that don’t work.

High performing sales organizations are actually pretty boring to look at.  They work like “well oiled” machines.  They consistently, quietly execute their sales process, they engage customers in differentiated, value based ways.  There’s not a lot of drama–when there is, it’s because something isn’t working–usually a failure of execution.