Take a moment to define a high performing salesperson 12 months ago.
Now take a moment and describe a high performing salesperson for the next 18 months.
What’s the difference?
Let’s start with commonalties. Back then we still had competition. We still had to develop trust and build a relationship. We still had to ask a few questions and provide value. We still had to deal with internal politics of our client’s businesses. We still had to present and seal the deal. Sales were made in spite of the salesperson’s weaknesses not because of their strengths. 12 months ago selling was mostly taking orders.
Welcome to the new world of Sales!
For the next 18 months salespeople are going to meet more resistance in their markets. They are going to have to work harder to gain first meetings. They are going to have to have more opportunities in the pipeline. They are going to face more fierce competition who win on price. They are going to have to raise the price and keep the business. They are going to have to go around purchasing and get to the person who owns the problem. They are going to have to build more value, ask better questions, harder questions, and more questions, and differentiate on something other than price. They will have to listen better too. They are going to have to have more in-depth conversations about ROI. They are going to have to qualify harder, get to the decision maker faster, and overcome more objections. They must pushback respectfully and earn respect. The must be creative and find ways to make the deal work. And they are going to have to create strong urgency as opposed to ‘nice to have’. They are going to have to have more motivation, more commitment to success, take more personal responsibility and, triple down on their effort. They can no longer wait for the email request, hope a client renews, and live on their current accounts. They must protect and expand their accounts. They must infect their accounts. They must close faster to keep the competition from sneaking in. They are going to have to be the superstars of 2009!
What CEO’s, CFO’s and VP’s should do is take inventory of their current teams skills strengths weaknesses and challenges and get to work fast to make everyone on the team the superstars of 2009. Not by gut. Not by production. Not by history. But instead by a 3rd party unbiased scientific data driven analysis.
That is us and it is needed more than ever. Take a look at the dashboard below and see if you can visualize how your team would score today. Then click on the link and analyze your team at no charge. We’ll provide you and overview summary of your team and help you identify the gaps compared to world class and the Superstars of 2009.
http://stats.objectivemanagement.com/41
