Vision without execution is hallucination – Thomas Edison
Sales Managers are prone to ask two questions of their sales team:-
How much? and By when?
I have jokingly made the remark in the past that is all that a sales manager needs to manage his sales team. Fortunately there is more to motivating, coaching and leading a sales team than these two questions. These two questions pre-suppose that the only thing to focus on is closing sales.
However that is like telling a pro-golfer all he needs to do is be a good putter, forgetting that there is a lot of work to be done before getting to the green. Driving off the tee up the fairway, avoiding the bunkers and getting on the green. So in sales it is a series of steps and agreements throughout the sales process.
The steps may look like this:
Initial Engagement
Qualification
Identifying Needs
Specifying the Solution
The Proposal
Commitment (the close)
Follow Through
Most sales are lost because one or more of the steps in the process are overlooked without any agreement before moving to the next step.
Each step needs to built on a firm foundation before moving to the next step. And each step requires a certain skills set of communication to enable the sales professional achieve a commitment and a series of agreements which will allow him to move the sales successfully forward.
In future blogs we will discuss each step in depth, in the meantime visit our workshops on Sales Solutions
Colly Graham
www.collygraham.co.uk
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