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While a sales curriculum primarily focuses on the content and structure of training, in a sales academy there are additional elements such as online coaching sessions, sales enablement tools, additional learning programs, ongoing performance feedback and bite-sized learning (micro learning). The goal of a sales academy is not only to learn the skills but also to foster a culture of continuous learning and development within the sales organisation.

Creating a comprehensive sales academy involves several key elements to ensure a continuous learning and development of sales professionals. Here are some tips for the components of a sales academy:

1. Sales Capability Framework. Outline the skills, behaviours, knowledge, tools, and processes required for a sales person to achieve his/her goals. All aspects of sales has to be covered, including sales techniques, product knowledge, negotiation skills, and customer relationship management. 

2. Sales Assessment. Competency-based assessments focus on specific skills, behaviours, knowledge, tools, and processes required for a sales person to achieve his/her goals. An assessment can serve as a baseline measurement and starting point for a learning and development process. 

3. Sales Methodology. Teach a specific sales methodology or approach tailored to your organization's sales process. Common methodologies include Solution Selling®, Insight Selling™, Challenger Sale™, Key Account Management and Dealer Management .

4. Sales Workshops. Incorporate various learning modules such as videos, presentations, simulations, quizzes, and case studies to engage learners and facilitate active participation.

5. Soft Skills Development. Recognize also the importance of soft skills such as empathy, resilience, and emotional intelligence in sales success, and incorporate training or e-books, audios or video on these skills into the curriculum.

6. Role-Playing Exercises. Conduct role-playing exercises to allow sales professionals to practice their skills in realistic scenarios and receive feedback from trainer/coaches or peers.

7. Sales Coaching. Offer ongoing coaching programs to support sales professionals in their development, provide guidance, and help them overcome challenges.

8. Sales Enablement. Provide training on the use of sales tools and technologies such as CRM software, marketing automation, sales playbooks, sales presentations, sales intelligence & prospecting, and AI-tools to enhance productivity and efficiency.

9. Product and Market Knowledge. Ensure that sales professionals have a deep understanding of the products or services they are selling, as well as knowledge about the target market, industry trends, and competitive landscape.

10. Performance Evaluation and Feedback. Implement a system for evaluating sales performance and provide constructive feedback to help individuals identify areas for improvement and track their progress over time.

11. Continued Learning and Development. Encourage a culture of continuous learning and development by offering advanced training programs, workshops, webinars, bite-sized learning, and access to resources such as audio learning and video courses.

By integrating these elements into your sales academy, you can build a robust learning and development program for years to come that equips sales professionals with the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to succeed in today's competitive marketplace. Call us now + 31 (0)74 27 77 866 62 to schedule a consultation and learn how a custom sales academy can boost your sales success or see an example of a sales academy on academy.sellingnet.eu.

1. Uncover Your Prospect’s Pain Points

Setting your brand apart from competitors involves more than just showcasing your product's features. It's about demonstrating how your offering directly addresses your prospect's pain points and fulfills their unique needs—even those they may not have recognized yet. By delving into pain points your prospect hasn’t considered before, you position yourself as an expert, fostering trust and increasing the likelihood of a sale. This approach, often termed as the Solution Selling approach, places the salesperson in an advisory role, alleviating pressure on both the customer and the sales agent. However, authenticity is key. Avoid fabricating issues for the prospect; instead, gain insight into their genuine needs by asking questions like: What are your most pressing challenges?, What are the consequences of leaving these challenges unresolved?, What impact will this have on your business if left unaddressed?

2. Follow the 80-20 Rule

The Pareto Principle dictates that 80% of outcomes stem from 20% of causes. In sales, this translates to focusing on the 20% of leads most likely to convert. To apply this principle effectively, identify high-value leads worthy of pursuit. Analyze your most valuable customers—is there a common thread among them? Once you identify patterns, seek similar traits among your leads. While manual evaluation may suffice for smaller lead pools, leverage tools for lead scoring and pipeline tracking when dealing with larger volumes.

3. Avoid Forceful Sales Tactics

The urge to meet sales quotas often leads salespeople to pressure prospects into closing a deal, even when the fit isn't ideal. However, pushing a sale to an ill-suited customer leads to dissatisfaction and increased workload down the line. Instead, adopt a pragmatic approach in your follow-ups. If the fit seems poor, candidly communicate this to the lead and direct them to a more suitable solution. This honesty not only earns credibility but also fosters trust, potentially yielding referrals or altering the lead's perception of their needs.

4. Leverage Stories or Insights

Need to rescue a boring sales conversation? Tell a story or insight to grab your lead’s attention and help them see how they could succeed with your product or service. People love stories and insights. By providing relatable stories and valuable insights, you differentiate yourself from competitors and position yourself as a trusted advisor.

5. Mirror Your Lead

Build trust and rapport by mirroring the behaviors and communication styles of your leads. People tend to open up more to those they perceive as similar to themselves. Mirroring, when done subtly, enhances this connection. Adjust your body language and echo your prospect's language to foster active listening and deepen engagement. The goal is to forge a genuine connection, not manipulate the prospect.

6. ABC—Always Be Curious

While "Always Be Closing" is a common sales mantra, it risks prioritizing your goals over the customer's needs. Instead, prioritize curiosity about your lead and their company. By delving into their motivations and challenges, you uncover invaluable insights that enable you to tailor your solutions effectively. Show genuine interest in understanding their journey, and watch as the connection naturally blossoms.

By incorporating these proven sales techniques into your approach, you'll not only increase your conversion rates but also build lasting relationships with your customers. Remember, successful selling isn't just about closing deals; it's about solving problems and adding value to your customers' business.

What is a Sales Plan?

A sales plan lays out your objectives, high-level tactics, target audience, and potential obstacles. It's like a traditional business plan but focuses specifically on your sales strategy. A business plan lays out your goals — a sales plan describes exactly how you'll make those happen. Sales plans often include information about the business's target customers, revenue goals, team structure, and the strategies and resources necessary for achieving its targets.

What are the goals of an effective sales plan? The purpose is to:

• A. Communicate your company's goals and objectives.

• B. Provide strategic direction.

• C. Outline roles and responsibilities.

• D. Communicate and monitor your sales team's progress

Ad. A. Goals and objectives are the lifeblood of successful sales efforts. You can‘t know what you’re working for or whether you‘ve achieved anything meaningful if you don’t have them in place.`Your sales reps need to have a solid sense of what‘s expected of them — you can’t go to your team and just say, "Sell." You have to establish clear benchmarks that reconcile practicality with ambition. And if (or more likely when) those goals change over time, you need to regularly communicate those shifts and the strategic adjustments that come with them to your team.

Ad. B. Your sales strategy keeps your sales process productive — it offers the actionable steps your reps can take to deliver on your vision and realize the goals you set. So naturally, you need to communicate it effectively. A sales plan offers a solid resource for that. Regardless of how you want to approach the situation, a thoughtfully structured sales plan will give both you and your reps a high-level perspective that would inform more cohesive, effective efforts across the team.

Ad. C. An efficient sales organization operates like a well-oiled machine, with each part having a specific function. Outlining roles and responsibilities during sales planning promotes efficient task delegation, collaboration, overlap reduction, and increased accountability, resulting in streamlined and successful sales efforts.

Ad. D. Sales planning can set the framework for gauging how well your team is delivering on your sales strategy. It can inform the benchmarks and milestones reps can use to see how their performance stacks up against your goals and expectations. It also gives sales leadership a holistic view of how well a sales org is functioning as a whole — giving them the necessary perspective to understand whether they have the right people and tools in place to be as successful as possible.

Sales Planning Process

Sales planning isn‘t (and shouldn’t) be limited to the actual sales plan document it produces. If that document is going to have any substance or practical value, it needs to be the byproduct of a thorough, well-informed, high-level strategy. When sales planning, you have some key steps you need to cover — including:

• Step 1. Gather sales data and search for trends.

• Step 2. Define your objectives.

• Step 3. Determine metrics for success.

• Step 4. Assess the current situation.

• Step 5. Start sales forecasting.

• Step 6. Identify gaps.

• Step 7. Ideate new initiatives.

• Step 8. Involve stakeholders.

• Step 9. Outline action items.

• Step 10. Provide direction for a successful execution

Ad. Step 1: Gather sales data and search for trends. To plan for the present and future, your company needs to look to the past. What did sales look like during the previous year? What about the last five years? Using this information can help you identify trends in your industry. While it's not foolproof, it helps establish a foundation for your sales planning process.

Ad. Step 2: Define your objectives. How do you know your business is doing well if you have no goals? As you can tell from its placement on this list, defining your goals and objectives is one of the first steps you should take in your sales planning process. Once you have them defined, you can move forward with executing them.

Ad. Step 3: Determine metrics for success. Every business is different. One thing we can all agree on is that you need metrics for success. These metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs). What are you going to use to determine if your business is successful? KPIs differ based on your medium, but standard metrics are gross profit margins, return on investment (ROI), daily web traffic users, conversion rate, and more.

Ad. Step 4: Assess the current situation. How is your business fairing right now? This information is relevant to determining how your current situation holds up to the goals and objectives you set during step two. What are your roadblocks? What are your strengths? Create a list of the obstacles hindering your success. Identify the assets you can use as an advantage. These factors will guide you as you build your sales plan.

Ad. Step 5: Start sales forecasting. Sales forecasting is an in-depth report that predicts what a salesperson, team, or company will sell weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. While it is finicky, it can help your company make better decisions when hiring, budgeting, prospecting, and setting goals.

Ad. Step 6: Identify gaps. When identifying gaps in your business, consider what your company needs now and what you might need in the future. First, identify the skills you feel your employees need to reach your goal. Second, evaluate the skills of your current employees. Once you have this information, you can train employees or hire new ones to fill the gaps.

Ad. Step 7: Ideate new initiatives. Many industry trends are cyclical. They phase in and out of “style.” As you build your sales plan, ideate new initiatives based on opportunities you may have passed on in previous years. If your business exclusively focused on word-of-mouth and social media marketing in the past, consider adding webinars or special promotions to your plan.

Ad. Step 8: Involve stakeholders. Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations with a vested interest in your company. They are typically employees and customers and often have deciding power in your business. Towards the end of your sales planning process, involve stakeholders from departments that affect your outcomes, such as marketing and service. It leads to an efficient and actionable sales planning process.

Ad. Step 9: Outline action items. Once you have implemented this strategy to create your sales planning process, the final step is outlining your action items. Using your company's capacity and quota numbers, build a list of steps that take you through the sales process. Examples of action items are writing a sales call script, identifying industry competitors, or strategizing new incentives.

Ad. Step 10. Provide direction for a successful execution. Perhaps the most important step in this process: coaching, guiding and providing direction to the sales team. You can have a beautiful and well-thought-out sales plan, but without the right management skills it's a paper tiger!

1. Informed Buyers

Sales professionals highlight that their prospects are highly knowledgeable before the initial interaction. As the Internet (and AI) continues to play a pivotal role in shaping consumer insights, buyers are progressing further in the sales cycle independently.

2. Salespeople as Consultants

With buyers taking charge of their knowledge acquisition, sales professionals are transitioning into consultative relationship builders. Trust and rapport building have become paramount, reflecting a shift in focus from product-centric to customer-centric selling.

3. High-Quality Conversations in the Spotlight

As buyers become more informed, sales conversations are evolving towards higher quality. Salespeople are no longer burdened with providing basic product information; instead, conversations are centered around addressing specific needs and pains and building meaningful connections.

4. Evolving Sales Processes

The sales process is undergoing a transformation, demanding more touchpoints to effectively engage prospects. Despite this, certain businesses may experience shorter sales cycles as buyers, armed with valuable insights, progress through the pipeline more swiftly.

5. Demos Shift Focus to Problem-Solving

Successful sales demos will prioritize addressing customer needs and pains over showcasing product features. Prospects are less interested in the intricacies of a product and more focused on how it aligns with their needs and pains.

6. Existing Customers Take Priority

The importance of existing customers continues to rise. Recognizing that existing customers contribute significantly to revenue, businesses are likely to continue this trend into 2024.

7. Efficiency is a Top Priority!

Efficiency remains a critical goal for sales professionals, especially in the face of economic uncertainties. A streamlined sales process is viewed not only as a necessity but as a potential driver of growth in the coming year.

8. Personalization as a Key Driver

In 2024, personalization or buyer-first approach will be paramount in sales strategies. Marketing messages will be tailored to prioritize the buyer's perspective, marking a departure from traditional selling methods.

9. Sales Cycles

Organizations are challenging the notion of lengthy B2B sales cycles. Decision-makers are showing a willingness to make quicker choices if provided with the right resources, challenging the traditional waiting period.

10. Cutting the Small 

Account-Based Marketing gains prominence as sales trends move towards better data insights. Hyper-personalized messaging and content tailored to high-value customer segments become instrumental in winning over customers.

11. AI-Powered Sales Assistance

AI continues to revolutionize the sales process, with a surge in AI-powered sales assistance tools expected in 2024. These tools analyze data to provide insights, predict customer behavior, and streamline decision-making.

12. Interactive Experiences

The popularity of online content influences sales strategies, with short-lived videos and virtual reality becoming key tools to create urgency and engage audiences dynamically. These technologies enhance customer experiences, from product demonstrations, customer stories to virtual showrooms.

13. Sustainable and Ethical Selling

Growing consumer consciousness drives a shift towards sustainable and ethical selling. Companies aligning with customer values and contributing to social causes are expected to gain trust and loyalty.

14. Emphasis on Customer Education

In the information age, customer education becomes a focal point of sales strategies. Providing valuable content and resources empowers customers to make informed decisions, building trust and positioning the sales professional as a knowledgeable partner.

15. Collaborative Selling Models

Collaborative selling models gain traction, emphasizing close coordination between sales, marketing, customer service, and product development. This approach ensures a seamless customer experience and aligns sales strategies with broader business goals.

In conclusion, 2024 promises to be a transformative year for sales, characterized by the integration of advanced technologies, a customer-centric approach, and a dynamic shift in traditional sales practices. Adapting to these trends will be crucial for sales professionals and organizations striving to stay ahead in an ever-evolving market. 

The intricate relationship between pain and change is undeniable. When a client contemplates implementing a new system, adopting new software, or undergoing substantial organizational shifts, it signals the existence of underlying problem that demand resolution. The magnitude of the problem – or ‘sense of urgency’ - directly correlates with the client's willingness to embrace change. In essence, the larger the problem, the more significant the change they are prepared to undertake.

External factors, such as the emergence of new or better competitors, evolving manufacturing processes, or shifts in customer requirements, often act as catalysts for change. Similarly, organizational pursuits of new strategic targets necessitate adaptations. However, when change involves substantial costs and risks, decision-making requires courage. Clients must assess the size of the pain associated with the problem, evaluating whether it is worth solving and if feasible solutions exist. Determining the priority of the issue becomes crucial.

To effectively guide clients through the decision-making process, sellers must delve into the specifics of the client's pain points. The client's perspective on the problem is essential, considering that pain is a personal experience intertwined with one's role and responsibilities. For a manager, the pain might manifest as a critical system malfunctioning, which, while challenging for the individual, can have far-reaching consequences for the entire organization, impacting costs and revenues in direct and indirect ways.

Conclusion. Recognizing and addressing pain points emerges as a huge motivator for clients to change. Whether triggered by external forces or internal strategic goals, change becomes a viable and necessary option when the pain associated with existing problems is substantial. Sellers play a pivotal role in this process, guiding clients to articulate their pain, analyse its causes, and ultimately find tailored solutions. In essence, the identification and understanding of pain points early in the sales process lay the foundation for sales success!

The problem is, 'C-level' lives in CRM data. It's their holy grail. They don't understand that a CRM system simply isn’t meant to be used as a real-time deal platform and that the data may be less accurate than they think. We all know “the data is only as good as what’s entered” or the other classic, “garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)”. And that is the case in many companies. By regularly attending weekly stand-up meetings, C-level would gain better insights. A pipeline review or a painful win/loss analysis in a stand-up meeting tells much more than those graphs in a CRM system. So don't tell them the benefits of a weekly stand-up meeting, but invite them! And if you have cold feet for your first stand-up meeting, we can facilitate you.

Teams that move to an agile sales methodology see more sales professionals hit quota and along with that, the company enjoys a better revenue. Sounds too good to be true, right? Using a 'yardstick' in the weekly stand-up meetings, provides extra (intrinsic) motivation: you don't want to be 'the loser' of the week, week after week... Second reason is that managers can access key insights for each deal in real-time so they can iterate quickly and collaborate to get deals across the finish line. And finally, with a true agile sales platform, C-level can access visuals and stats to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to be adjusted and iterated upon for future quarters.

Call connect rates, email reply rates, and conversation-to-meeting rates are all down compared to a few years ago. You’re not going to dig yourself out of this situation by making more calls and sending more emails. It’s not more, it’s better. Whatever problems you solve, your prospects still have all of those problems, plus the new ones that have been brought on by the coronavirus, the upcoming recession and the energy prices. Discuss these issues in your weekly stand-up meetings and teach your team again and again...

Forecasts are changing literally every day, and the best models in the world are useless. The companies that are handling this dynamic well have clear insight into deals at every stage of their pipeline, understand the risks in each of those deals, and know what they have to do to address those risks. The companies that can’t instantly see that for every single deal are driving blind right now. For those, it's time for Agile Selling. Check out our Agile Selling Toolbox with practical tools that support an agile sales process. The best way to assess the risks is to look for gaps (days since last contact, missing real pains, only one point of contact, etc.). Of course, that means the information on your deals needs to be both complete and accurate. That's why the weekly stand-up meetings...

Due to the coronavirus, field sellers became inside sellers, worked from home and many forgot how to sell successfully... Still a lot of reps don’t know what to do these days and they don’t know how to do it. They have grown from unconsciously competent to unconsciously incompetent. Use the weekly stand-up meeting to give more direction, start coaching and ask us to train them.

The benefits of an agile sales process are endless, but organizations are often slow to adopt a new framework for selling, despite how critical it is for long term success. We all know from experience how easy it is to get caught up in the monthly or quarterly whirlwind and only focus on the deals that require attention in the here and now. Focus is good, vision is also necessary!

The landscape of buying and selling has changed more in recent years than it has in preceding decades. Customers are more sophisticated and, thanks to the Internet, are awash in information and research. At the same time, companies are searching for new ways to innovate, compete, and improve their success. Training is necessary to create salespeople who are successful in this changing sales landscape. I’ve been educating sales managers and salespeople for more than 20 years. I think 10 years ago the game plan for selling in a complex environment started to change. The big difference was that the customer himself could get facts about suppliers and their offerings, which meant that the salesperson no longer had an information advantage. In our Sales Skills Monitor - an ongoing research project that measures the competence level of Dutch B2B-sales reps - we studied the results of almost 700 B2B-sales reps to find out what winners do differently from those who come in second place. The top six things sales winners do most differently in the sales cycle from second-place finishers is that successful salespeople discuss quick wins and share new ideas with their customers, coach customers to achieve business results, communicate a strong value proposition, work together with people in the customers’ organization, ask for commitment each time and cultivate the relationship. 

In 2013 we developed Insight Selling™ and modernized Solution Selling® - first we named it Advanced Solution Selling® but what's in a name… For the first time our sales methods could support a complex sales process. Usually, the success or failure of a sale was almost dependent on the salesperson’s talent. And that changed. I think we had focused on sales techniques so long and somehow forgotten about the customer, especially customers, where many stakeholders would agree on a common solution or where the complexity of customer demand was high. Our Sales Skills Monitor showed us that the most common reason for business failure was that the salesperson, after a short need-analysis, told the customer what they needed. The customer asked for a quotation. The salesperson interpreted this as a buying signal and passed quickly over a quotation. When the client got the quotation…. nothing happened. Even if the quotation was discussed in a management team meeting. Other management team members did not see the value of the investment or ROI (return on investment) and blocked the decision. The salesperson had missed the definition of the word solution and we didn’t give him the tools! 

As said, we developed Insight Selling™ and modernized Solution Selling®. And results came instantly. Salespeople we’d educated in Insight Selling™ and (Advanced) Solution Selling® told us about deals where the customer had become actively involved and driven the sale to a conclusion, without that the salesperson had to hunt over. The salespersons were perceived as an advisor to the customer. In our new research paper I want to give you some ideas for how you can draw on your map of complex solution sales, thereby increasing the efficiency of your sales. Download the research paper.

I define a sales playbook simply as: 'A conversation co-pilot that helps the sales team doing the right things right!' It implies (also) that a sales playbook can be different for each sales team, or each company depending on what and how they sell and how you want to support the team in each stage of the sales cycle. 

I also love Hubspot’s definition, which is more specific and aligns with how I like to create a sales playbook: 'A sales playbook is a document outlining your sales process; buyer personas; call scripts and agendas; sample emails; discovery, qualification, demo, and negotiation questions; proposal guidelines; and/or competitive intelligence guidelines. In other words, your sales playbook arms your reps with all the content and strategies they need to close a deal.' 

Without the cohesion of a sales playbook, everyone is doing things their own way. And it’s hard to steer a rowing boat and set a course if everyone is paddling without any coordination. Sales reps wasting time by constantly reinventing available content and resources. With everyone paddling without any coordination, it’s impossible to know what is working, and what isn’t. How can sales teams like this improve? How can they test new approaches in a meaningful way? How can they hold everyone to a common standard? How can sales teams like this stop spinning their wheels and actually grow? They can’t. These teams are operating in the past. Maybe a fun place for some people, but not a place to scale and grow your business. 

A sales playbook can be an indicator of a leadership style that extends beyond the playbook itself. It speaks to how well a sales team is running and managed. It demonstrates alignment, repeatable processes, accountability, expectation management. It guides the culture and coaching and ongoing investments into skill development of the sales team. So start today with a sales playbook, a conversation co-pilot that helps your sales team doing the right things right! 

There are business challenges in which innovation is mostly the answer: 

1. How do we empathize with our customers and profit from it? 

Businesses have understood that to be profitable, they need to provide value offerings that meet the needs of their customers. Therefore identifying unmet needs of your target customers by learning about them and uncover behavioral insights. These insights are used to improve or develop new value offering(s) to satisfy the unmet needs of your (new) customers. 

2. How do we evaluate which ideas to develop further? 

Every organisation has ideas! These ideas need to be validated by target customers before they can be developed further into practical innovation. On INNOmaps.org you find the tools for this proces.

3. How do we commercialize our (technology) invention? 

Commercializing an idea into the market requires research on how users behave and interact with that idea. Again, on INNOmaps.org you find the tools for this proces. 

4. How do we predict the uncertain future? 

When businesses are not able to foresee and keep up with emerging trends, this usually has a negative impact to their bottom line. From disruption to changing needs, their ability to sustain competitive advantage declines, if not disrupted. In order to stay relevant, you need to identify emerging trends, develop scenarios, and create innovation from scenarios based on trends. Again, on INNOmaps.org you find the tools for this proces.

5. How do we develop solutions to realize our visions and get around trade-offs? 

You have a vision that needs to be realized. In some cases, you may need to redefine or change its future direction on what business you are in and which market you should be doing business at. Therefore, converting a vision into reality is achieved by creating an innovation roadmap that is designed to scale for growth through iterative strategic planning. 

6. How do we deliver our brand promise to customers? 

Brand promises are communicated constantly with the expectation that these promises are delivered. For brands to turn their brand vision and deliver their promises to their customers, experience innovation is required to keep their promises through the implementation of value offerings delivered in a compelling experience. It's time to surf to INNOmaps.org where you find the tools for this proces. 

7. How do we execute our business strategy? 

Every company has a top-down business strategy that needs to be achieved over a period of time. Innovation that performs well in the market is partly due to the result of an effective strategy. Vice versa an innovation strategy executes what a business strategy aims to achieve. 

These are the most important challenges that businesses typically face in which business innovation is the answer. Regardless at which point of entry challenges are being solved, this will result in changing the status quo on how businesses create and deliver values to customers.

For many sales managers focusing on short-term day-to-day results, it's often challenging to think like a leader and focus on achieving a long-term vision. But that is exactly what a sales manager must do in order to maximize the performance of his or her sales team. A Sales Mission is a statement that indicates where you want your sales team to be at some future time. Without a Sales Mission, a sales team may have lack of focus, difficulty prioritizing activities, or a feeling of drifting. A clear Sales Mission provides focus and direction for you and your team, energizes your team, and improves results and performance. The M-O-S-T process is a powerful framework that helps you develop and achieve a long term vision. M-O-S-T is an acronym that stands for Mission, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics. The first step of this process is to create a strong Sales Mission, for example: “To be one of the top five dealers within the next 12 months.” 

A Sales Mission may be somewhat vague. In order to make it concrete and easy to understand for your sales team, you need to translate your mission into one or more specific Objectives. Next, you should develop some broad Strategies to achieve your Objectives. And finally, identify step-by-step Tactics that you and your team will need to execute each of these Strategies. 

1. Creating your Sales Mission 

Creating your Sales Mission means answering the question: Where do you want to be? That means thinking about where you want your team to be with regards to sales within your company or relative to your competitors. An example of a Sales Mission statement could be “Improve our Customer Satisfaction Rating by five percent within the next 6 months.” Notice how this sales vision statement is future focused and seems attainable in some reasonable period of time. A good rule of thumb is to develop a sales vision that is attainable within 6-12 months. Why 6-12 months? Missions that are achievable in a shorter period of time are typically too narrow and too easily achievable to be true mission. Conversely, a longer period of time is indicative a mission that is too far-reaching and possibly too difficult to keep your team focused on. A Sales Mission must also be challenging, something that is above and beyond the normal expectations. It should also be attainable, that is, realistic enough to be achievable if you and your team stretch a bit. Your Sales Mission should also specify some positive change that you are committed to realize through concerted effort with your sales team. In fact, it grows from an intense desire to make something positive happen. And of cause your mission must align with organizational goals. 

2. Translating the Sale Mission into Objectives 

The next step in developing a Sales Mission is to focus the broad vision you have identified by converting it to one or more Objectives. The more specific your Objectives, the easier it will be to communicate it to the team and the easier it will be for the team to understand it, commit to it, and work toward it. The familiar SMART acronym is a great guide in setting effective objectives: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. So if your Sales Mission is “To be one of the top five dealers within the next 12 months.”, a related SMART goal that ties to that mission could be: “Increase sales volume by 10% by June 30 and increase sales volume by 15% in Q3 and Q4.” 

3. Developing Strategies 

The next step is to develop Strategies. Strategies describe how you will achieve your Objectives. For instance, in pursuit of your goal to “Increase sales volume by 10% by June 30” you could have increase your team’s sales coverage by hiring additional salespeople or use marketing automation, run a special sales incentive program for the sales team, or target key accounts and communicate additional areas of value you can offer to grow existing business. So each of these Strategies directly tie back to your Objectives. 

4. Identifying Tactics 

Now that you know where you want to go, what you need to achieve, and how you are going to get there, you need to identify specific action steps, or Tactics, you will take to implement each Strategy. In other words, what steps need to be taken, by whom, by when and how much? In determining your Tactics keep these ideas in mind: 

- Identify major activities or benchmarks. Just as you would note landmarks on a road map, you should identify key points and activities in your action plan to be sure you’re on the right track and are headed toward your destination. 

- Define responsibilities and other resources needed. Each team member should play a defined role in carrying out the action steps and helping to achieve the Sales Mission. To ensure successful completion of individual Tactics, be clear and specific in defining responsibilities and how they will be carried out. Identify necessary resources and include them in your action plan. 

- Specify target dates for completion. In order to move closer to your goal and reach it within the designated time frame, set target dates for each action step. Target dates also create a sense of urgency and motivate the team to move ahead together. While there many aspects to leading a sales team, developing and achieving your Sales Mission is a key sales leadership ability. By following the M-O-S-T process you get the MOST out of your sales team! 

Download and use our presentation ‘4 Steps to Achieve Your Sales Mission’ and/or use our INNOmap Sales Mission.

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1. See the big picture. Think big instead of small! Successful people expect the best, and they generally get it, because expectations have a way of attracting to us their material equivalent. Since our lives correspond pretty much to the expectations we have of it, the achiever will argue, why not think big instead of small? So move forward, see the big picture and only look back if you want to learn from it.

2. Find mastery. To succeed, practice your craft and focus. Enduring success is built on discipline and requires concentration of effort and focus. It’s easy to lose your focus to social media, e-mail or people who are asking frequently for your help (and they bring mostly negative energy) than to focus on things that bring you closer to your personal goals. Most people disperse their energy over too many things and fail to be outstanding in anything.

3. Do the work you love. Use your natural talents and abilities and arrange your day to spend more time on the things you do the best and you like the most. Still searching for those things? Dreading another dull day in the office? How long will you stay in this situation? Say Hell No! Find another job, embrace failure and keep on trying. Successful people just keep on trying until they succeed in something they really really love.

4. Be positive. Live in the present and banish negative thoughts. In our evolutionary history, worry and fear were important - they kept us alive in dangerous situations. While we’re no longer fleeing from sharp-toothed animals, many of us still worrying about the past or making negative projections about the future. Give yourself a pep talk and believe in yourself, so that the outside world’s negativity won’t matter. If you can’t change it, don’t bother!

5. Be cooperative. As we evolved, we developed the ability to cooperate: doing so helped us survive. Dale Carnegie advised us that the first step in a successful cooperation is to listen active and to show respect for the other person's opinion. Being cooperative is the glue which keeps a team together, a bond which promotes strength, unity, reliability, support and goal driven.

6. Trust your intuition. Accept your inherent irrationality. Successful people have a good relationship with their unconscious or subconscious mind. They trust their intuition, and because intuitions are usually right, they seem to enjoy more luck than others. They have discovered one of the great success secrets: that the non-rational mind perfectly solves problems and creates solutions when trusted to do so.

7. Do it step-by-step. Make small changes for big results. Change is most lasting when it’s built on small positive habits. Find tweaks you can make today and you’ll be on your way to building practices that make for a happier, more productive tomorrow. 

8. Be curious and learn. Look into the habits of the successful, and you will find that they are usually great readers and they are willing to learn. If you can read about the accomplishments of those you admire, you cannot help but lift your own sights. Also benchmark your skills, learn, and realize that your company is changing. Be part of that change.

9. Be always customer-oriented. Businesses succeed and fail because of customers. Do everything you can to understand your customer’s wants/needs/pains and focus on ways to satisfy those needs (or to eliminate those pains). Cultivate customer relationships and accept that you must sow before you can reap. 

10. Focus on sales. You must, without any doubt, know what you are selling, how you are better than your competition, and who buys from you. And then maintain focus as you generate sales. Go the extra mile as this brings better profit for now and better opportunities in the future. 

In a hypercompetitive environment today, sales organizations are facing immense challenges stemming from demands for higher revenue growth and cost efficiency. Mature sales structures are being put to the test everywhere. Large corporations and mid-sized firms are striving to improve their sales excellence in order to profit even more from the sales side. The ideal sales organization may look different depending on the industry, but a sales optimization always involves five steps: 

Sales Strategy. Setting your priorities right is putting the right sales targets and budgets in place. That can only be done when you are fully knowledgeable of the strategic importance of markets and customer segments. Yet this knowledge is often what’s missing. Start with our free business innovation tools to create better business results. 

Market Approach. Ensure growth with the best possible market development. What is the best mixture of direct and indirect as well as physical and digital sales channels? Start for example with our Lead Generation Map to improve and sustain on how you get more qualified leads. 

Sales Structure. Create sales structure efficiency with the right sales organization. How many hunters and farmers does your sales organization need? What about key account managers and inside sales? How should responsibilities and interfaces be organized? See the bigger picture with our Sales Roadmap. 

Pricing Strategy. Boost profitability with the right prices. Your typical sales rep pays great attention to the number of closed deals or other sales targets, but the profitability of orders is often neglected. When did you last interview your customers about your pricing? And why don’t you coach your sales reps on higher prices? Pricing is the basis of your business and it is the most important factor in profitability. Start with our Customer Value Map. 

Sales Controlling. One of the most important responsibilities of a sales manager is to exercise control over sales and the performance of selling/sales activities. Sales need to be controlled both on an ongoing (continuous) basis as well as overall, periodically. The sales control function assists the manager in ascertaining which level of sales have been achieved and why there has been a variance. Download our poster with 100 Sales Metrics. 

There is no optimal way of organizing your sales, but there is the one right path to sales excellence. This path will take you through five steps covering sales strategy, market approach, sales structure, pricing strategy and sales controlling. The end game, strong sales, needs direction and implementation before it can really take off and achieve maximum results. 

Key account management (KAM) is one of the most important changes in the history of selling. KAM is a radically different organizational process used by business-to-business suppliers to manage their relationships with strategically-important customers (key customers), and it (can) produce measurable business benefits. Not surprisingly, smart suppliers are keen to implement KAM. But, many KAM implementations fail. For example, many companies mistake their objective as their strategy in KAM. They describe their aspiration in terms of growth in sales and/or profits from key customers, apparently failing to notice that simply stating a number does not achieve it. Until how they will achieve the desired outcome is specified, there is no defined route to success that people can follow. 

KAM strategies can be very varied: they may focus on the introduction of new products; greater supply chain flexibility; extra capacity; new technology or services that will add value to key customers; and they may include initiatives that offer more efficiency or effectiveness (e.g. cost reductions) for the key customer and for the supplier, such as production savings, etc. Suppliers need to be clear about their specific value focus in the relationship in order to optimize activities, processes, and resource allocation. You can identify several kinds of value: exchange value, created through the supplier’s KAM activities, e.g. tailored product offering; supplier value, created by the supplier, e.g. supply chain efficiencies; relational value, co-created value, joint new product development. A strong focus on supplier value with limited attention to exchange and relational value will mostly lead to unsuccessful KAM. 

Key customers should have an understanding of the value strategy that is pursued by the supplier in order to optimize their own position. Through the account plan, both parties can see how their strategies can be aligned to optimize the benefits they gain from the relationship. Therefore an account plan is: 

• for the customer, to make the added value they could expect visible and explicit; 

• for the supplier, to show how the plan contributed to the corporate vision (and results); 

• for the KAM team, to specify goals and objectives; 

• for other account managers, to share plans and learn from it; 

• for the account manager, to provide a clear roadmap (to success) for managing the key customer and gain the organization’s approval and support for it. 

Successful KAM should balance the value appropriated by the supplier and the key customer, but sadly that's not always the case. Some suppliers making healthy profit from a big business with the key customer and give nothing special in exchange; and some key customers leave the supplier with a poor return on their investment (lock-up situation). Neither of these situations is sustainable in the long term. At the end it's all about value creation by the supplier resulting in lower costs for the key customer and healthy business growth for the supplier. And if not so, the relationship is doomed to fail! 

Read here

There's a long-held and promoted perception that decision-makers are hyper rational and numbers oriented and that marketers and sales people need to message exclusively to their sense of reason because of it. But what if decision-makers aren't as rational as you think and emotions play a bigger role than you realize? In this context, I briefly describe a fascinating theory: the Prospect theory. This theory is a behavioral economic theory that describes the way people choose between probabilistic alternatives that involve risk. The theory says that people are 2 to 3 times more likely to make a decision or seek a risk to avoid a loss. But does this theory also applies to decision-makers? Of all the factors we studied in our Sales Skills Monitor, we saw that winners deepen the relation on a emotional level and talk more about the pains and gains then second-place finishers. Talking more on a emotional level - including talking about the pains and gains - was not a coincidence we presumed. Recently Corporate Visions conducted an experiment that stated our presumption. The study which tested 113 executives across a variety of decision-making scenarios, found that when you frame a status quo situation in terms of loss instead of gain, 70 percent of the decision-makers were willing to make the riskier choice. So as it turns out, decision-makers are just as much influenced by emotions as everyone else and the Prospect theory also applies to the hyper rational and numbers oriented decision maker! 

If you are aware of the direction the decision-maker is thinking about - away from pain or towards gain - it opens up opportunities for you to present solutions that match his or her way of thinking. This will help the decision-maker to realise the benefits of change and possibly increase the urgency of that change. To increase awareness of the urgency to make a decision, we can use 'pain questions' that increase the pain points and stress the impacts of those pains. This makes the decision-maker think seriously about the solution, while reducing the impact of the money he or she would spend or the risks he or she would take. Some examples of 'pain questions': How long has this been going on?; How much time have you already spent on this?; What has it cost you in lost production?; How have these issues impacted on your business so far?; What other impacts is this problem having on you?; How much longer are you willing to let this happen?; What impact has it had on you personally?; How has it affected customer satisfaction?; What would be the consequences if you did nothing about the situation?; What would happen if you waited to solve this? 

Of cause you can also use questions to heighten the value of what customers would gain by using your solution: How would the business benefit of solving this?; What results are you expecting from the improvements?; How will the staff feel when this is solved?; What impact do you see this having on your customers? All of these questions is helping the decision-maker to imagine the value that changing the situation may have on his or her future operations. So, think through how you can either increase pain to make the decision-maker aware of the urgency of the change, or increase the impact of gain. 

This post is part three about Insight Selling™. Part one describes the changing landscape of buying and selling and why sales reps who bring valuable insights and ideas to buyers, win more sales. Part two is addressing additional skills needed for sales professionals in a changing sales landscape. This post is about connecting the dots between buyer needs and seller solutions. Think of a ‘normal’ selling concept: diagnosing and connecting the needs, requirement and pains with the gains or values of the product, services and overall capabilities of the company. In our Sales Skills Monitor - an ongoing research project that measures the competence level of Dutch B2B-sales reps - we found that while this concept is still alive and necessary today, it has changed in three very important ways:

1. Understanding versus diagnosing. In a ‘normal’ selling concept the emphasis is strongly on diagnosing the buyer. In our research project we looked at what winners do differently than second-place finishers. Of all the factors we studied, winners deepened the understanding of the customers’ needs. Second-place finishers actually focused more on diagnosis than the winners, yet they still lost. In fact, winners demonstrated they understood the buyers’ needs 2.5 times more often than second-place finishers. So fundamentally, sellers need to shift from diagnosing needs to demonstrating an understanding of needs. Addressing the buyers’ needs requires hard skills such as divergent thinking, insights and business acumen (see part two). 

2. Rational versus emotional. There's a long-held and promoted perception that decision makers are hyper rational and numbers oriented and that marketers and sales people need to message exclusively to their sense of reason because of it. But what if decision makers aren't as rational as you think and emotions play a bigger role than you realize? In this context, I briefly describe a fascinating theory: the Prospect theory. This theory is a behavioral economic theory that describes the way people choose between probabilistic alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The theory says that people are 2 to 3 times more likely to make a decision or seek a risk to avoid a loss. But does this theory also applies to decision-makers? Of all the factors we studied in our Sales Skills Monitor, we saw that winners deepen the relation on a emotional level and talk more about the pains & gains then second-place finishers. Talking more on a emotional level - including talking about the pains & gains - was not a coincidence we presumed. Recently Corporate Visions conducted an experiment that stated our presumption. The study which tested 113 executives across a variety of decision-making scenarios, found that when you frame a status quo situation in terms of loss instead of gain, 70 percent of the decision makers were willing to make the riskier choice. So as it turns out, decision makers are just as much influenced by emotions as everyone else and the Prospect theory also applies to the hyper rational and numbers oriented decision maker! 

3. Focusing on pains versus gains. SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham is one of the most intuitive books on the market for selling. SPIN Selling explains the science behind consultative selling, or rather, presenting an offer to a potential client, based systematically on the clients pain-points, using a powerful questioning process. SPIN Selling defines problem questions as the second step in the questioning process. During this step, salespeople ask about the buyer's pain. SPIN teaches that people buy when the pain of the problem is greater than the cost of the solution. While this focus on 'pain' can be useful - see the Prospect theory - it is too narrow. Problem or pain questions assume that the buyer feels the pain or recognizes the problem. But that is not always the case. Pain is most likely to be felt when buyers are responsible for internal processes that are going wrong. When this happens, people realize their pain, but they don't necessarily know the causes. Certainly, Rackham's work with Xerox Corporation in the 70s and 80s influenced his thinking here. Those who bought reproduction equipment in this timeframe were dealing with internal constraints and conflicts that caused pain. However, many buyers are not in this situation. Some buyers are looking for ways to advance their position to address their desire for gain rather than to address the pain of loss. So they may or may not have a problem they need to solve, but they always have to make choices about how to use their resources to achieve the best results. Among these choices, there is always the choice of simply doing nothing. People with ‘pain’ are motivated to make a change, but so are people who are doing well and want to do better. Seeing all buying decisions in terms of problems and pain can hide as much as it reveals. 

Let’s say the buyer doesn’t perceive anything - or anything important enough to act on -to be wrong. SPIN Sellers find themselves at a dead end. No problems to fix. Nothing to sell. So don’t just focus on the negative, but also focus on the positive - the goals, the aspirations, and possibilities. Even if the buyer doesn’t know it yet. Along with having much richer sales conversations, focusing on the positive opens the door to significant opportunity to increase sales. In our Sales Skills Monitor we saw that winners who focus on aspirations as well as afflictions are able to directly influence the buyer’s agenda by inspiring them with possibilities they hadn’t been considering, but should. 

Epilogue. Imagine for a minute that someone is selling to you and you perceive the seller doesn’t understand your needs and doesn’t craft a compelling solution. Their chances of winning business from you are probably pretty slim. Now consider that the seller demonstrates a strong understanding of your needs and crafts a compelling solution, but you perceive that they aren’t listening to you and you haven’t made any kind of personal connection with them. As long as any other seller meets the minimum criteria, you’re unlikely to buy from the unlikeable seller who isn’t listening. Yes, the landscape of buying and selling has dramatically changed but selling basics still remain the same.

This post is part two about Insight Selling™. Part one describes the changing landscape of buying and selling and why sales reps who bring valuable insights and ideas to buyers, win more sales. This post is addressing additional skills needed for sales professionals in a changing sales landscape. Addressing change requires different thinking on the part of the sales professional. Soft skills remain as a portion of the knowledge and abilities needed to succeed in sales but no longer are in a dominating position. Hard skills such as divergent thinking, insights and business acumen are necessary if the sales professional is to meet and exceed expectations. 

Divergent Thinking. It may seem unusual that a form of thinking is included in the modern sales professional skill set, yet with the variety of issues, changes and disruption that must be considered it is a necessary component. Divergent thinking allows one to see multiple possibilities and opportunities and be willing to take a risk by shifting perspective. The counterpart of divergent thinking is convergent thinking. Convergent thinkers function on the premise that there are a limited number of solutions to solve a problem. They are most comfortable with standards and SOPs, tradition and status quo. Convergent thinkers can run the plays they have practiced while divergent thinkers can run the plays and see the whole playing field. Some are naturally divergent thinkers while others must develop the ability. Expanding one’s style of thinking is an achievable goal using reverse thinking techniques to add an additional layer to your thinking. Perhaps the concept of working consciously to develop divergent thinking skills is the greatest delineation between what was expected of sales professionals from the past and those going forward. The phrase think outside the box has gained catch-phrase status in the business world. Sales professionals are continuously urged to think outside the box to sell more, to increase revenues, and to grow the bottom line. To think outside the box means that it is okay not to accept something at face value, and instead to deeply listen, ask questions and consider a different approach. 

Insights. Think about someone you seek out when you’re working through a challenge. They help you think things through and see what’s important. They ask the right questions. They listen. They don’t just give you answers - they help you come up with them. And yet, they’re not afraid to tell you what they think, share their ideas, and take a stand when they feel strongly about something. People like this make us better. They help us see what’s possible. That’s why we get so much from interacting with them. That’s why we seek them out again and again. Salespeople who are winning major sales these days are starting to look just like these people. With the rise of the Internet, today’s buyers have a lot of information and choices, but they don’t necessarily have more wisdom or confidence. They need people to discuss quick wins and to share new ideas and insights and help them to think it through. Yet this is where so many sellers are struggling, falling short and losing, while a select few are getting it right and winning. It requires a systematic approach to understand the customer and his organization. Understand what the customer is facing from competitors, their customers, and within their own organization means that the salesperson can reframe the discussion ensuring that the customer is asking the right questions, focusing on areas of concern, and gaining greater awareness of unmet needs. By providing quick wins and share new ideas and insights, sales professional encourages customers to step beyond their comfort zone and consider solutions they really need. 

Business Acumen. According to a Forrester report, only 27% of B2B buyers find that salespeople knowledgeable about the buyer's specific business. Additionally a study by Corporate Visions determined that customers believe that sales reps are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise. These are big gaps in the selling process. Sales professionals must not only be able to ask the right questions, but ask those questions in the context of their customer’s business. They need to be able to position insights and value in terms of customer business metrics and in relation to a customer’s strategy. I define business acumen as a thorough understanding of how a company makes money and, from a selling perspective, how the customer makes money. It includes an awareness of what drives profitability, a market-focused approach to the business, and an overall knowledge of the business and its interrelationships. Developing a strong business acumen core enables sales professionals to understand the business side of selling. It helps salespeople recognize their customers’ business and business strategy. It teaches sales professionals how an insight relates to the value of the solution, and it allows them to be better prepared to respond to questions and objections to their insights by having a deep understanding of the systems of their customer’s business. They need to be able to take a dialogue framework and learn to ask appropriate business situational questions, business challenge questions, and business opportunity questions. The bottom line? With a strong business acumen knowledge base, sales professionals will improve their ability to position value from their customer’s business perspective and fully leverage an insight selling approach. 

The landscape of buying and selling has changed more in recent years than it has in preceding decades. Customers are more sophisticated and, thanks to the Internet, are awash in information and research. At the same time, companies are searching for new ways to innovate, compete, and improve their success. When sales reps bring valuable insights and ideas to buyers, they strengthen relationships, differentiate from competition, and win more sales. Training is necessary to create salespeople who are successful in this changing sales landscape. The Insight Selling training program (in Dutch and English) by Sellingnet teaches sales reps not only in soft skills but also in the above described hard skills. The Insight Selling Toolbox helps them to learn to think outside the box, to elaborate and use insights and to develop their business acumen.

To develop insights download the Insight Selling Map.

Reference list: 

• Insight Selling: Surprising research on what sales winners do differently, Mike Schultz and John E. Doer (Rain Group), 2014; 

• Insight Selling: How to sell value & differentiate your product with Insight Scenarios, Michael Harris (Insight Demand), 2014; 

• The Challenger Sale: Taking control of the customer conversation, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson (CEB), 2011; 

• SPIN Selling Revised, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2005;

• Seven Steps of Selling, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2011; 

• Sales Skills Monitor, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2015. 

• Insight Selling Map, Insight Sales Conversation Process, Insight Selling Toolbox: Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2017.

Think about someone you seek out when you’re working through a challenge. They help you think things through and see what’s important. They ask the right questions. They listen. They don’t just give you answers— they help you come up with them. And yet, they’re not afraid to tell you what they think, share their ideas, and take a stand when they feel strongly about something. People like this make us better. They help us see what’s possible. That’s why we get so much from interacting with them. That’s why we seek them out again and again. Salespeople who are winning major sales these days are starting to look just like these people. With the rise of the Internet, today’s buyers have a lot of information and choices, but they don’t necessarily have more wisdom or confidence. They need people to discuss quick wins and to share new ideas and help them think these ideas through. Yet this is where so many sellers are struggling, falling short and losing, while a select few are getting it right and winning. How do we know? In our Sales Skills Monitor - an ongoing research project that measures the competence level of Dutch B2B-sales reps - we studied the results of almost 700 B2B-sales reps to find out what winners do differently from those who come in second place. The top six things sales winners do most differently in the sales cycle from second-place finishers is that successful salespeople discuss quick wins and share new ideas with their customers, coach customers to achieve business results, communicate a strong value proposition, work together with people in the customers’ organization, ask for commitment each time and cultivate the relationship. 

Buyers are doing their research on the Internet, and traditional salespeople are getting left behind. It is tempting to throw your hands up in defeat and simply respond reactively to the opportunities your customers give you. This approach can drive intense price competition. To avoid this commoditization, salespeople must create value and shape opportunities. Shaping opportunities requires that a sales rep is able to change the way a customer is thinking about his or her needs. It's all about disrupting the customer’s thinking so that he or she takes a few steps back and reconsider the need or solution. Through building trust and credibility, and through sharing relevant insights - quick wins and new ideas - based on credible research or experience, the sales rep challenges the buyer to think through what’s wrong or what’s missing in his or her prescribed approach. Shaping opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigate competition and price sensitivity for the seller while resulting in a better solution for the customer. Creating opportunities requires the sales rep to make the customer aware of a new issue or opportunity or raise the sense of urgency of an issue to act sooner. This is most applicable when the customer is very early in - or not even in - their buying process. The sales rep that engages the customer at this level is trying to provoke a need rather than responding to a request. As in the shape mode, sales reps must build trust and credibility and share relevant insight based on credible research or experience. By doing this, the seller challenges the buyer to think through the risks of not prioritizing and accelerating an initiative. Creating opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigate competition and price sensitivity for the seller while helping the customer move forward on an initiative to help them make money, save money, or manage risks.

Is the concept of Insight Selling new? Yes and no! I've been teaching my participants for more than 20 years that they use a 'rabbit-out-of-a-hat' if sales conversations suffering from 'anemia'. And that can occur when customers are frequently being visited. A ‘rabbit-out-of-a-hat’ can be a new product application, market research, customer experiences, etc. It can also be used when a buyer should be doing something and the buyer has little or no idea about it until you bring it up. But there is a second category of insights: interaction insights. Interaction insights are what happens when the seller helps the buyer gain new perspectives on old problems, become aware of opportunities they were previously unaware of and develop bold new ideas for addressing their challenges. The key is that, with interaction insights, it’s the interaction between the buyer and seller itself that leads to the development of the insight.

As mentioned above, creating and shaping opportunities requires the sales rep to leverage insight to challenge the customer’s mindset. Insight is information or ideas that are based on credible research, authoritative content, or relevant experiences and are tailored to a buyer’s challenges and opportunities. When shared, it encourages the buyer to think about their needs in a new way, showing them a path to solve a challenge or capitalize on an opportunity by leveraging the capabilities and differentiators offered by the seller. The Insight Selling training program by Selling, will teach your team exactly what they need to do to succeed with an insight-based approach. They’ll learn how to create conversations with buyers on the premise of ideas and insights, maximize relationship strength based on value, and more. The landscape of buying and selling has changed more in recent years than it has in preceding decades. Buyers are more sophisticated and, thanks to the Internet, are awash in information and research. At the same time, executives are searching - often in vain - for new ways to innovate, compete, and improve their success. When sales reps bring valuable insights and ideas to buyers, they strengthen relationships, differentiate from competition, and win more sales. Insight Selling by Sellingnet teaches sales reps how to create conversations based on ideas, inspire with insights, and set themselves and their companies apart from the pack.

Next time we discuss new skills needed for sales professionals in a changing sales landscape. Soft skills remain as a portion of the knowledge and abilities needed to succeed in sales but no longer are in a dominating position. Hard skills such as divergent thinking, insights and business acumen are necessary if the sales professional is to meet and exceed expectations.

To develop insights download the Insight Selling Map.

Reference list: 

• Insight Selling: Surprising research on what sales winners do differently, Mike Schultz and John E. Doer (Rain Group), 2014; 

• Insight Selling: How to sell value & differentiate your product with Insight Scenarios, Michael Harris (Insight Demand), 2014; 

• The Challenger Sale: Taking control of the customer conversation, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson (CEB), 2011; 

• SPIN Selling Revised, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2005;

• Seven Steps of Selling, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2011; 

• Sales Skills Monitor, research paper, Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2015. 

• Insight Selling Map & Insight Sales Conversation Process: Ronald Swensson (Sellingnet), 2017.

How often do you hear the words 'WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY' around your organization? Wasn't it only last month that a senior manager blocked a new employee's suggestion with that exact phrase, adding: ‘IT'S NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY'. If all this sounds overly familiar, it's time to seriously examine the way in which your organization operates in today's rapidly changing environment. Certainly, it's important to build on your past successes and not simply change for the sake of change, which is a costly exercise in itself. But, never forget that, even if you don't change, your competitors and customers may. Too often, people confuse necessary change with change for the sake of change. Every organization - regardless of its past success - should always remain open to new ideas. It's a recipe for disaster to say: ‘LET’S KEEP IT IN MIND’, without at least proper assessing if an idea is actually working. 

Take a look at a computer company that dominated the personal computer business for generations. IBM had incredible market share, rising stock prices and amongst the highest paid employees in the world. When I did my sales training with them in 1985 – I worked for a large and well known ÌBM reseller ‘Infotheek’ in Holland - we were told that only three personal computer manufacturers would be in existence by the turn of the century . Never was it considered, even a remote possibility that IBM might not be one of them. In 1993, IBM posted a US$8 billion loss - at that time the biggest in American corporate history - and Lou Gerstner was hired as CEO from RJR Nabisco to turn the company around. Most people at IBM said to each other: ‘IT HAS BEEN TRIED BEFORE’ when Gerstner unveiled his ‘change plan’. They stood cross-armed and watched passively what was happening. Changes therefore got a slow start. Almost ten years later IBM could sell its personal computer business to Chinese technology company Lenovo. And the other two everybody thought that would be in business by the turn of the century? It was Compaq - acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2002 and defunct as a subsidiary as of 2010. And Olivetti - sold its PC business in 1997... 

The best thing in business innovation is to learn from the mistakes of others. Here are three major lessons learned from some of the biggest business blunders ever occurred. 

Mistake #1: Ignoring your own innovations 

Back in the 1970’s Xerox opened the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The facility developed many modern computing technologies such as the graphical user interface (GUI), laser printing, WYSIWYG text editors and Ethernet. From these inventions, Xerox PARC created the Xerox Alto in 1973, a small minicomputer similar to a modern personal computer. This machine can be considered the first true Personal Computer, given its versatile combination of a cathode-ray-type screen, mouse-type pointing device, and a QWERTY-type alphanumeric keyboard. But the Alto was never commercially sold, as Xerox itself could not see the sales potential of it. Senior management thought: ‘THE MARKET ISN'T READY FOR THIS’ and told the people at PARC: ‘LET'S KEEP IT IN MIND’ and that was the end of the Alto story... almost... 

There once was a young man named Steve Jobs and in 1979 he was invited to take a tour of the Xerox PARC facility. And during this tour he was introduced to the Xerox Alto and all its (at that time) 'jaw-dropping tech'. A ‘mouse’ moved the cursor on the screen and clicked on icons, opened and closed ‘windows’ and wrote emails to other people at PARC. Jobs gradually got more and more excited and took this inspiration back to Apple and the rest, as you know, is history. Jobs is quoted as saying, ‘They just had no idea what they had’ because he was told: ‘WE'RE NOT IN THAT BUSINESS’. 

Mistake #2: Not looking beyond your existing business model 

Back in 2000, Reed Hastings, founder of the then tiny, but thriving company called Netflix, met up with Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his team. Blockbuster was the kingpin of the video rental industry in the United States. Hastings suggested they join forces and work together. Netflix could help run Blockbuster’s online services while Blockbuster could run Netflix’s offline DVD rental through their large network of stores. Hastings was laughed out of the room... Blockbuster continued focusing on their existing business model - physical stores that rent out videos. In 2004 Blockbuster CEO John Antioco realized that Netflix and others were becoming a threat and pumped money into a digital platform which he hoped would pave the way to Blockbuster’s bright future. The Board of Blockbuster was not amused about the $400 million these moves would cost the company and fired Antioco. They did not believe that growing an online business was the right strategy to take. ‘NOBODY IS DOING IT’ and ‘WE'VE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE' was the Board's argumentation. Just a short 6 years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and you know what is happening with Netflix... 

Mistake #3: Not changing fast enough 

For a long time Nokia defined the mobile phone industry. It was the world’s no. 1 phone company and sold its billionth phone in 2005. Shortly after, iPhones and Android came into the market and customers weren’t looking at Nokia anymore. Why? Nokia realized a bit too late that they had to compete with the smartphones being produced by Apple, Blackberry and Samsung. While Nokia continued releasing solid phones with top-notch build quality, the Symbian software that they used in their touch-enabled phones were sub-par compared to Apple and Android phones. Nokia was making great quality phones with amazing cameras, but lagged behind in user experience. ‘WHY DO WE HAVE TO CHANGE?’ and ‘WE'RE NOT READY FOR IT’ most Nokia people thought when they saw the first smartphones... 

Mistake #4 (as a Bonus): THINK! AND THINK AGAIN! 

In 2013 Microsoft announced the purchase of Nokia's phone assets and finalized the deal in April 2014. The total purchase price ended up as approximately $7.9 billion. In 2015 Microsoft wrote off $7.2 billion related to its Nokia acquisition... Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described in 2013 his move as ‘a bold step into the future’ and 'the next big phase of the transformation of Microsoft as a devices and services company’. The announcement slapped the failure sticker on the last major move made by Ballmer, who pushed for the Nokia deal in his final months in office... Yes, sometimes it is better to think and think again... 

A good LinkedIn profile doesn’t just offer you a place to showcase your career and skills. It can also give you the chance to network with others, discover topics that are popular in your field and join in on those discussions, and allow you to become a experts on subjects that are important to you. 

Make that profile shine 

• Have a good quality photo that reflects the style of the industry you want to join. 

• Have a sharp summary at the top of your profile regarding your experience or offerings. 

• Add your skills and experience and have as much detail on your profile as possible. 

• Make sure you put a little bit of your personality into your profile – it shouldn’t be as formal as your CV. 

• Be active and share 

• Like and share relevant content to both your interests and your career interests - to give your profile personality. 

• If you have a lot to say - think about creating your own posts to share. 

• Post articles that show your passion for your profession - you’ll get noticed more and recognised for the interest and effort you have gone to. 

• Try to add your own opinion to anything you repost - it shows you have one and helps others to understand why this post is important to you and for them. 

• If you’re having trouble to make the time or find content you like – try LinkedIn’s Pulse app – it’s an easy way to find out what people in your network are talking about. 

• Encourage connections 

• Take advantage of face-to-face meetings to connect with people on LinkedIn. 

• Build your network - start with friends, but try to connect with people who have known you professionally too. 

• Give feedback on others (using the skills feature - rating and suggesting skills) - this encourages mutual feedback Join relevant groups and get involved in conversations. 

• Connect with the right people to grow your network.

We live in a time where little is predictable. Many companies navigate in a marketplace where competitors appear overnight or claim something new unexpectedly. Customers have rising demands and new understanding of speed, brand relationship and personalisation. And business plans rarely last a full year. Companies are looking for new revenue streams, new ways to add value for their customers and new business models. To achieve this, we need new skills, new tools and a new mindset. In today’s world we need to think like designers and use visual tools for strategy and business innovation. These tools can be used to make complex issues simple and understandable, to create future scenarios and look ahead. And to generate different options and develop new ideas. Visual tools are easy to understand by everyone. They help you unlock the potential within your company, collect all feasible ideas and make strategy an experience that motivates highly. In order to be able to use visual tools, you need a completely different mindset, so forget (almost) everything you learned during your business classes. 

Our visual tools - we call them INNOmaps and we produced 80 of them - can help you on how to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better business results. They are all grounded in existing theories and practices of business innovation, business design, and business development. It draws on a study of many hundreds of tools currently being used - we have included only the ones which professionals found most useful. An INNOmap is quick to use - download and print it or project it on a Smartboard - simple to apply, and it is designed to help even busy business people! Plan your strategy beforehand and decide which INNOmap(s) you need to get the results you want. For example, do you want to create a shared vision, a new business model or a new or better product/service for your customers? Choose one or more of the 50 INNOmaps and start with your team! Our INNOmaps are all free of charge. Why? Because we like to share our knowledge and we hope that we can help you to look at your business from a different angle. 

Our 80 INNOmaps are: After Action Review, Ansoff Matrix, Balanced Scorecard, BIP Business Innovation Process, Blue Ocean Strategy, Building Partnerships Map, Business Innovation Flowchart, Business Model Canvas, COCD-Box, Context Trend Canvas, Customer Journey, Customer Strategy, Customer Value Map, Empathy Map, Evidence Planning, Experience Tour, Five Bold Steps Vision Canvas, Go-No-Go Decision Matrix, Idea Canvas, Innovation Compass, Innovation Matrix, Lead Generation Map, Learning Loop, Marketing Mix, Mind Map, Napkin Idea, OGSM, One-Page Strategic Plan, People Shadowing, Personas, Play-to-Win Strategy Canvas, Porter's Five Forces, Porter's Value Chain, Problem Definition, Reframing Matrix, Risk Assessment Map, Sales Balanced Scorecard, Sales Roadmap, SCAMPER, Sellogram, Solution Matrix, SWOT Analysis, Target Group, Thinking Hats, Trend Canvas, Triple P Model, Types of Innovation, Value Proposition Map, Vision Board, Visual Mapping.

Surf to our new website and start to download the INNOmaps!

Read here

Driven by an explosion of new web applications and changing customer buying preferences, Sales 2.0 is finally starting to wake up to reality - Nigel Edelshain created the concept already in 2006 (..) What is sales 2.0 and is there a sales 1.0? If so, what is the difference? And is one more effective or efficient than the other? And how to start with Sales 2.0? 

The increase of web technology has changed the way many (not all) of us connect, engage and interact with a clear impact on information sharing, collaboration, and commerce. The buzzword ‘Sales 2.0’ generally refers to the use of that technology in the context of selling goods and services and ‘Sales 1.0’, another buzzword, refers to the use of more ‘traditional’ methods in Sales. 

I will come straight to the point; it is not accurate to say - like many do - that Sales 2.0 is more effective or efficient than Sales 1.0. For example, if I sell building heating systems and I want an appointment with a prospect who is planning a new head office nearby, in Sales 2.0 I have to wait till he is downloading our whitepaper on Heat Building Solutions, in Sales 1.0 I make a cold call ;-) But, we all have realized that traditional ‘interruption based’ marketing has become less-and-less effective. Likewise, we are learning that ‘interruption based’ selling has become less effective. Buyers are beginning to live online and they are the ones in control of your sales cycle. They have, in essence, taken control of the purchase process. 

Today’s digital environment has given your customers a new way to buy. They’re armed with ammunition from Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, the websites of you and your competitors and a multitude of other online resources. A shift has developed between the buyer and seller creating the movement from Sales 1.0 to Sales 2.0. Research from Google and CEB titled The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing provides new insight into buyer behavior. Customers reported to being nearly 60 percent through the sales process before engaging a sales rep, regardless of price point. So 60 percent of the sales process just disappeared! 

What are B2B buyers doing before talking to sales? They are surfing corporate websites to identify and qualify vendors. They are engaging peers in social media to learn more about potential solutions and providers. And they are reading, listening to and watching free digital content that is available to them at the click of a mouse. So the sales team is no longer the sole source or gatekeeper of information. 

Moving an organization from a Sales 1.0 culture to a Sales 2.0 culture is not for the faint of heart...it goes far beyond implementing new technology. It involves the whole organization embracing the paradigm shift to the new digital reality, where the customer now holds the power in the buy/sell relationship. But… companies who are building a Sales 2.0 culture will experience that they close more deals, close deals faster with less cost of sale, know what is coming down the pipeline, generate more revenue at lower costs and create and sustain a higher level of customer loyalty. So start changing now! 

How to start? 

• Higher search rankings: Be more active or pay Google ;-) Optimize your website, produce excellent linkable and shareable content and keep user experience in mind so that it ranks higher in Google's search engine. 

• Social networking: In the past, salespeople found it difficult to locate the appropriate contact at a target company. But many now use LinkedIn to find the right people to talk and also many companies have their own LinkedIn page. 

• Sales leads: According to industry research, one-third of all salespeople are still stuck in the Sales 1.0 model and cold calling hard to generate leads. Smart companies nurture prospects. How? Contact my smart friends at Klantenfabriek, they know how. 

• Webinars, blogs and whitepapers: By hosting web events, write blogs or provide downloadable and shareable whitepapers, sales and marketing professionals reach many more prospects at a fraction of the cost. 

• Live collaboration: Technologies such as Cisco WebEx, Adobe Connect, Idiligo and even Skype and Google+ Hangouts, allow sales reps to make engaging, interactive sales presentations over the Internet, rather than traveling long distances for face-to-face meetings. By cutting out travel time and expense, sales reps boost productivity and greatly lower selling costs. 

• Personalized contact and tracking: Web 2.0 revolutionized lead generation. Sales 2.0 tools such as Genius, Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot and SharpSpring personalize direct-contact e-mails and let reps know how individual prospects respond - whether they opened the e-mail, clicked to the website, or visited certain web pages. Instead of calling every prospect after a targeted e-mail blast, reps will call only those prospects that have read their e-mail, visited their website, or downloaded their whitepaper. That’s a huge time savings. A range of other tools - such as Oracle Eloqua, Vertical Response and Get Response - also produce higher-quality leads through targeted e-marketing campaigns. These technologies create tighter integration between sales and marketing teams. 

• More intelligent CRM: Organizations can incorporate many of the Sales 2.0 tools and applications with on-demand CRM systems such as Salesforce, Pipedrive and Infusionsoft. Marketing and prospect data can be smoothly imported, making CRM more powerful and indispensable than ever.

• Management analytics: Tools such as Qlik, Geckoboard or Klipfolio allow sales managers to create meaningful dashboards that help them diagnose sales performance issues before they turn into real problems. 

Conclusion 

Sales 2.0 enabled businesses leverage technology to connect with prospects and enhance relationships, thereby increasing sales and profits and distancing themselves from their competition. The new world of Sales 2.0 offers greater opportunities to the technology-savvy sales executive, where cold calls are a thing mostly of the past. Now, salespeople pursue real opportunities and connect with prospects faster - co-creating more integrated, value-driven solutions - and the sales process is a mirror image of the buying process. But… never forget that selling has always been about relationships. The adage ‘nothing takes the place of face-to-face contact’ will still survive and sales people still need skills to successful cold call that company that is planning a new head office nearby!

Scrum has its roots in software development, but it is often applied in other domains, for example manufacturing, education and contracting. One area of successful adopting Scrum has been sales. Companies that have used Scrum for sales say it made a chaotic process transparent, predictive and controllable. We have commonly seen sales teams increase their hit rate by 30-50%. Sales teams at first may be sceptical of the team oriented nature of Scrum. Due to the individual nature of sales people, Scrumming sales requires a cultural shift. 'Every Man For Himself, God For Us All' has to change in 'The Whole Is More Than The Sum Of Its Parts'. To achieve this cultural shift is a big challenge for a sales manager. 

The most stringent effect of using Scrum in sales is the insight that the direct cause and effect for closing a sales deal can be detected in an early stage and as such controlled. Through the usage of Scrum, a sales team will learn that there are early indicators that have a direct relation with final sales results. As such, it becomes easier to predict final order intake and sales numbers. Before using Scrum, everyone in sales shares a common agreement that sales is a random process which is ultimately impossible to control (..). After all, the customer decides to buy and not sales. By implementing Scrum, sales teams learn that they have early predictive indicators that help them to control their final outputs. Furthermore, they have their processes much better under control, they improve them continuously and they simply have more fun in their work. 

To get started with Scrum the first thing is to buy an old-fashioned whiteboard, this will be your new Scrum Board (or you can use our INNOmaps). Leads are sometimes listed vertically down in order of priority, on a Scrum Board there are multiple columns across the horizontal axis for each step in the sales process (sales pipeline). Leads are moved to the far right 'done' column only when a sale has been closed or the lead has proven fruitless. You create an overview by posting all sales leads and their status on the Scrum Board and it helps the team to see what leads are struggling to move toward the done column. As a sales team gets more experienced in Scrum, patterns usually start to emerge. By tracking leads on a Scrum board and discuss every week (weekly standup meetings) what works and what does not, the sales process becomes more transparent (of cause there are also the success stories: team members tell each other which deals they closed and how they did it). You can create rules for having leads on the Scrum Board, for example 'if a lead doesn’t move at least 2 steps through the sales process in 3 months it will be abandoned'. This allows the team members to spend more time on leads that have a higher probability of closing (and sometimes it creates more pressure on a specific lead which would otherwise fall on the ground...). 

What are the major benefits of Scrum as a methodology for sales teams? 

• Sales is more predictable; cause and effects can be learned and when better known it is possible that 'hitrates' improve by 30-50%; 

• The awareness within a sales team that sales alone is not sufficient; total value delivery (or value creation) is nowedays crucial; 

• The awareness that there is more to win with existing customers (up-, cross - and deep selling); 

• Goal setting will lead to creative thinking, eagerness and a higher learning capacity on improving the ratios of cold calling to deals;

• You get smarter sales teams as they use practical Scrum techniques;

• Better understanding and determining the buyers journey by asking the right questions.

The businesses we sell to, the problems we solve, and the solutions we offer have evolved tremendously in the past 10-15 years. The fact is that a high percentage of salespeople haven’t kept pace with this evolution. We’re working in a time I’ve come to refer to as ‘the third phase of modern selling’. Understanding the history of this evolution is an important factor to moving forward into this third phase. So let me step back with you for a moment. Several years ago, I was asked in a sales training to give a brief overview of the different selling skills used over the years. As I surveyed what literature there was on this subject, I found that sales, unlike most other functions in the modern corporation, didn’t really have much of a ‘history’. At least, almost nobody studied and wrote about selling and selling skills in the same way that they studied and wrote about Marketing or General Management. I figured that the best way to find a window on the history of modern selling skills was to look at the evolution of sales books. Feeling like an archeologist, I searched the internet and checked out all the material I could find that addressed the question, ‘How can I be more successful in sales by using the right selling skills?’. It turned out to be quite a load of stuff: training manuals, articles, recordings and lots and lots of sales books (see also our collection 100 Classic Sales Books and a historical framework I wrote for this collection). I was surprised that after some consideration, you could easily classify them into three main time frames, what I’ve come to call phase one, phase two and phase three of modern selling. `

Phase one 

The earliest material in phase one begins roughly at the beginning of the last century and continues until the mid-seventies. A reviewer today would characterize the titles of some of these sales books somewhere between naïve and hilarious: ‘The Customer Who Can’t Say No!’, ‘How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling’, ‘Open the Mind and Close the Sale’ and ‘The Sale Begins When The Customer Says No’. But the skills just under the surface were both subtle and sophisticated. This was the phase of the sales script. ‘Just tell me what to say in a sales interview and I will close the deal’. The agenda was mostly purely the seller’s agenda, and the seller’s agenda was to get the customer to do what he - and in some few cases, she - wanted the customer to do. The role of ‘the phase one salesperson’ was that of a persuader. Sales books focused almost exclusively on three areas: presenting, handling objections and of course, closing. These skills thrive nowadays in a few niches, for example outbound telemarketing, used car business and consumer electronics retail, but as an approach - and partly due to the internet - it has no future. Why? Basically, customers caught into a Win/Lose situation - ‘take it or leave it’ - and developed defense mechanisms that salespeople even today have to cope with. Phase one was replaced by an emphasis on a new set of skills, and by a new - and more sophisticated - point of view about the role of the salesperson. 

Phase two 

Phase two started in the mid-70s with Larry Wilson and his ‘Counselor Approach’ and Mack Hanan with his ‘Consultative Approach’ being two of the earliest proponents. The emphasis on presenting, closing, and handling objections characteristic of phase one is replaced in phase two with a focus on questioning, listening, trust, and building a relationship with the customer. You won’t find any reference to listening skills or building trust in any phase one material because listening or trust had absolutely no relevance to the phase one job (I might be exaggerating here a bit, but those skills had no priority). The questioning techniques of phase two were aimed at developing and understanding of the customer’s needs - defined as the difference between what the customer had and what the customer wanted - and the job of the salesperson was to understand and then close that gap with his or her product and called the ‘solution’. The phase two approach has come to be known as ‘needs-satisfaction selling’ and the role of the phase two salesperson is that of a problem solver. Because customers were brought in a Win/Win rather than a Win/Lose situation, phase two remains - even today - the basis for most sales training. But as the marketplace rapidly changed in the mid-90s - an increasing complexity of business problems and technology of solutions - customers were less and less able to accurately identify and describe their ‘pains and gains’ and salespeople were unable to counter the increasing purchasing power of large companies. So phase two selling skills needed an update. 

Phase three 

Phase three took shape more slowly than phase two did, and it represents a convergence of two main influences, both of which could be described under the general rubric of ‘business acumen’. If the role of the salesperson in phase one was that of a persuader, and in phase two of a problem solver, the emerging role of the salesperson in phase three could be described as a value creator. A value creator is challenged to think from very different and complementary perspectives, both at the same time. One point of view is that of the ‘consultant’, being a source of business advantage to the customer. When operating from this point of view, the salesperson must think like a business person and apply his or her business acumen and understanding of the customer’s business processes and priorities to creating a solution that the customer would truly value, but has never experienced and would never think to ask for. The other point of view is that of the ‘strategist’. The salesperson must think like a business person from the point of view of his or her own company. In phase one and two the salesperson was concerned only with revenue. Margins and cost of sales were somebody else’s problem. That paradigm - of cause - never did work very well. So phase three salespeople are concerned not just with revenues, but also with cost of sales: shortening the sales cycle, increasing customer loyalty, increasing deal sizes, qualifying opportunities and walking away from unprofitable business. In short, as a value creator, phase three salespeople are sources of advantage to their customers and to their own firm. It is about helping the customer go from its current state to its desired future state in a way that is both unique and valuable. When this is accomplished, the result is mutually beneficial value and a customer that considers the vendor strategic to their business. 

As a business coach I spend a lot of time helping startups and small and medium-sized businesses to develop a compelling value proposition. A value proposition is a promise or value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. In a nutshell, a value proposition is a clear statement that explains (1) how your product(s) and services solves customers’ problems or improves their situation (relevancy), (2) delivers specific benefits (quantified value) and (3) tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique or unusual differentiation). Creating a value proposition is based on a review and analysis of the benefits, costs and value that an organization can deliver to its customers and prospective customers. 

Most people think that a value proposition has to be 'unique' but unique offerings are (1) very difficult to create these days and almost impossible to sustain for very long and (2) by adding extra features, benefits and/or services, the higher your cost structure becomes and the less you stand out to your target customer. However, the best businesses have mastered consistency in unusual offerings. For example, McDonald’s has a better track record in terms of moving customers through lines and delivering consistent quality in food than other fast food restaurants. And when it comes to customer service, Coolblue - one of the largest online shops in the Benelux - has been able to set themselves apart from competitors who claim high-quality service as their differentiator. Once you develop and master your unusual offering(s), customers will easily agree to choose you over your competition. Then you can create marketing campaigns that make it easy for prospective customers to notice you, and have salespeople that can convert the core customers as they walk into the sales process. 

So how do you develop a strong value proposition? 

Asking yourself the following questions will give you the answers you need to create a strong value proposition: 

1. Who are you targeting? A good start is to properly define who your target market is. 

2. What do you actually do? While it sounds like a simple question, this is where many companies struggle. What are the benefits you deliver? 

3. Why have you won business in the past? A good exercise is to take a number of customer projects (or proposals) you have worked on in the past and identify the reasons you won that business. 

4. Who is your competition? Performing a SWOT analysis will help you identify areas you are particularly strong in and areas you need to improve. 

5. What do your customers think? Your perception of your company may not be what your customers perceive, so ask them! 

By analyzing these areas listed above, you have a strong basis for creating your unusual offering. Your value proposition statement takes time to build a compelling message that sets you apart and positions you to win more business. Before you begin sharing your value proposition, I recommend testing it on a few customers using a simple PowerPoint presentation. Taking their feedback into consideration will ensure that you create a value proposition that positions you unusual in the eyes of your customers. 

Here are some examples of strong value propositions: 

• We design our products to reduce your setup time in less then 40%! 

• Save time with our streamlined process and increase employees’ productivity. 

• We help salespeople crack into corporate accounts, speed up their sales cycle and win big contracts. 

• Our products help companies leverage the internet to triple their market reach and cut marketing costs in half when launching new products. 

These value propositions listed above, clearly communicate the benefits customers will receive and as a result, these companies stand out in customers’ minds. Use these principles to develop your own value proposition. Examine your business’ unusual offerings. What specific benefits do they offer your customers? What makes them seek you out over your competitors? Don’t be modest - sing your business’ praises and your customers will too ;-)

The development of modern salesmanship is a uniquely American story. The intense effort to ‘upgrade’ salesmanship distinguished the growth of capitalism in America from that in other countries. All European nations had peddling networks, some of which had existed for hundreds of years, but none created organized sales forces to the same degree as it did in the United States. There are several reasons for this. First, the emergence of salesmanship depended on a stable and widely used currency - in Europe in those days there were dozens of currencies - and the availability of credit - all aspects of the American economic system. Through this economic system and the enormous area, the scale of American firms was greater than in Europe. The massive manufacturing concerns of the early twentieth century, which produced tremendous numbers of business machines, appliances, and cars, hired salesmen in the hundreds (and even thousands); and these goods, all pushed by aggressive salesmanship, distinguished the American economy by their early appearance and widespread purchase. Organized selling in America flourished also for cultural reasons. Salesmanship, especially beginning in the late nineteenth century, seemed to offer a pathway to personal success.

In 1904 businessman P. W. Searles summarized in System Magazine the changes he had seen in selling over the past several years. Earlier, as he put it, a salesman traveled as his own boss. Now his routes were planned, his customers evaluated before his departure, and a trail of sales slips and reports established a record of his every move. Sales managers at large corporations assigned salesmen specific territories and gave them monthly or weekly quotas to meet. They aimed to make salesmanship uniform, predictable, and capable of being taught to new recruits. They even instructed salesmen on how to stand while talking with a customer, or how to hand over a pen at closing. Most turn-of-the-century salespeople were straight commission agents, very independent of the companies that employed them.

Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management concepts came late to the management of personal selling. This occurred because most companies believed that selling was an art, or a natural ability. Good salespeople were born, not made, and could not benefit from management. Many also believed that supervision was not necessary for commission salespeople. It was reasoned that, under the straight commission method of payment, good salespeople would be automa-tically rewarded and stay with the firm. Poor ones would be unable to support themselves and would resign. therefore, the commission compensation plan made supervision unnecessary.

Companies often allowed numerous salespeople to work in one territory so that poor performing salespeople would not limit the company from attaining the full sales potential of the territory. The problems associated with such a system are obvious. NCR, just before the turn of the century, was the first company to offer exclusive territories and unlimited earning potential to its salespeople.

The laissez faire attitude toward salespeople had clearly begun to change by the turn of the century. The influence of NCR's examples and of Taylor's scientific management concepts were powerful. New psychological theories that suggested the possibility of understanding behavior in order to improve salesperson selection and performance were being propounded. Business-people were increasingly convinced of the need to focus their efforts on management of sales forces. Another, perhaps more important influence was the changing economy. By the 1900s the old sellers' market was disappearing. Supply had caught up with demand. As a result, competition began increasingly intense. Management was forced to be more concerned with customer relations and performance in general. Therefore, sales management techniques and methods were developed to improve the competitive abilities of the firms operating in this new environment.

At the turn of the century the typical salesperson was paid a straight commission and thought of as an entity apart from the firm's organization. Therefore, firms provided very little training and development for salespeople. The ‘sink-or-swim method’ was common during the early decades of this century. As the ‘sink-or-swim method’ lost favor, true sales training became much more important. The more it came to be understood that mere ‘personality’ was inadequate for success, the more important sales training became. Business historians consider National Cash Register (NCR) the first company to provide training to its sales representatives and to be a pioneer in sales management. NCR, and some other firms, had perceived the benefits of training before the turn of the century. Corporate sales training programs consisted of learning the background and policies of the firm, product knowledge, types of customers, the market, the presentation and selling skills. The revolution in selling had consequences beyond the firm. The growth of systematic methods of salesmanship gave rise to a number of products and services. Trade journals, sales (management) magazines and -books were published. The Dartnell Corporation (John Cameron Aspley) began collecting empirical data on selling and produced reports for sales managers - a great deal of the earlier work of John Cameron Aspley is summarized in The Sales Promotion Handbook (1957). Also A.W. Shaw Company (Arch Wilkinson Shaw) started publishing books for sales managers - see the book Sales management (1914).

An important book, considered by many to be the first American sales management text, was Scientific Sales Management by Charles Wilson Hoyt (1913). Hoyt was director of the sales- and advertising department at George B. Woolson and Company (a publishing company). Hoyt positioned the sales manager as the link between salespeople and the firm. The sales manager's major responsibilities were to cooperate with salespeople and increase their efficiency. Business authors of this period noted that many experienced salespeople were hostile to sales management help -  see the book Marketing Methods and Salesmanship by Butler, DeBower and Jones (1914). Hoyt suggested that sales managers should deal with this problem by working with a new type of salesperson: . . . the one who accepted help from the house . . . and ignore the old type of salesperson . . . not the one who worked alone and was hostile to sales management assistance. Hoyt's pioneering text assigned the sales manager the following tasks to increase efficiency: (1) standardize the salesperson's presentations; (2) select candidates by obtaining their records through application blanks; (3) talk common sense to the sales force as opposed to offering them inspirational meetings; (4) and, eliminate the idea that advertising is a substitute for salespeople. Hoyt advocated the rating of salespeople through the use of contests. Despite the clear-cut danger of customer loss associated with hard selling techniques, this idea is encountered frequently throughout the early history of sales management thoughts. Its merit went unquestioned until Harry R. Tosdal's - Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School - criticism in his book Problems in Sales Management (1921).

John G. Jones, one of the first instructors of salesmanship, offered a sales management course at New York University in 1915. It included the following topics: selecting and training salespeople; planning sales equipment; methods of compensation; territory problems; sales contests; conventions and quotas. Jones was assisted in developing this course by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, where much of the earlier sales management materials were developed. He published in 1918 his book  Salesmanship and Sales Management. Harry R. Tosdal introduced a course in sales management in 1920 which included such topics as structure of the sales organization, sales research and investigation, formulation of sales policies, and preparation and execution of selling plans. Given the independence with which salespeople had operated prior to the general implementation of sales management, it is logical that the developing role of sales management (1900-1920) would be a narrow one.

Primary concern was with selection, supervision and control of salespeople. During the 1920s, a few writers were to offer a broadened definition of sales management which included marketing tasks. In 1920 J. George Frederick proclaimed in his book Modern Salesmanagement a new era for the field of sales management, an era of development, respectability and new-found professionalism. Frederick saw the sales manager as a major player within the total marketing function, which, in turn, encompassed the entire enterprise. He portrayed the sales manager as a top level executive, contributing to policy, and responsible for its implementation through the sales force. Frederick's sales manager was concerned with product quality and new product development as determined by the needs of the market. It was the sales manager's job, he wrote, to synchronize the standardization needs of production with the market's demand for a varied product line. Sales management had begun to evolve from the narrow supervisory role of the pre-1920 era to a broader one, embracing that marketing concept. Frederick was president of a company called ‘Business Bourse’ that specialized in publishing business-related research and data, he was married with Christine Frederick, an American home economist and early 20th century exponent of Taylorism).

The issue of the efficacy of psychological testing for salesperson selection was first addressed in the early 1900s. For example, reference is made by Butler, DeBower, and Jones (1914) to ‘ingenious oral and written examinations designed to test one's accuracy, mental alertness and ability to reason’. The authors predicted a not very bright future for such devices. They believed an able experienced salesperson would hesitate to work for a house using new ideas based entirely on theory. Walter Dill Scott, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, became the director of The Bureau of Salesmanship at Carnegie Tech in 1916, and was given grants by numerous large organizations to develop improved methods of salesperson selection. On the first World’s Salesmanship Congress (1916) Scott performed 'mental alertness tests' on young salesmen to predict which ones would most likely succeed. Among others he published the book Influencing Men in Business (1911) (see section How-to-Sell Books). Discussion of salesperson selection during the twenties and thirties reveals a rejection of the earlier view of the salesperson as an entity apart from the firm. Poor performance was seen as negative to both salesperson and firm. It became clear that customers were assets and selling skills were recognized as valuable. Tosdal criticized the overemphasis of employers on technical and industry knowledge, believing intelligence and the ability to relate products to the needs of buyers to be far more important. He advocated the creation of accurate job descriptions based on the nature of the selling job.

Tosdal's discussion of compensation programs – in his second book on sales management (1925) - is as thorough as any since. No truly new programs have been developed since then. Tosdal wrote: create a compensation plan that is motivating and fitted to the needs of the business. Four factors were considered in developing a compensation plan: (1) the income necessary to maintain a reasonable standard of living; (2) the market for salespeople; (3) the philosophy of the firm regarding payment at, above, or below market; (4) the nature of the product. He mentioned that employee turnover is an excellent indicator of the efficacy of a plan. Tosdal criticized straight salary plans for their failure to motivate. However, he agreed that commission plans increase effort but also heighten rivalry and turnover, emphasize short term sales, reduce new account development, and foster salesperson independence.

Formal sales management appears to have evolved from an era when oversimplified concepts were widely accepted (pre-1900), through the narrow supervisory role of the pre-1920 era, to a broader role during the years between the two World Wars. Most of the issues one finds in sales management books today, were discussed within the field of sales management during the productive period of 1915-1930, when simple Nineteenth Century viewpoints were being abandoned and the practical tools and conceptual framework of the discipline of sales management were established. It is remarkable that not until 1958, the first Dutch sales management book was published: Verkoopleiding en Verkooporganisatie by (economist) Jan L. Wage (as part of the series 'De Moderne Onderneming').

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