Introduction: How We Got Here
David Brock at Partners In Excellence and I had a nice exchange over sales processes last week. He started with a post titled But We Have a Sales Process. As the comments piled up, he added another post titled A Great Sales Process – Elegant In Its Simplicity, Natural in Execution. As I am more and more committed my sales process agnosticism, I couldn’t resist a response, posting Sales Process Problems: Turn by Turn Guidance Is Unavailable. David’s comments can be found at the bottom of my post.
We enjoyed our exchange, and we agree on one very important principle regarding sales processes. So David and I decided to write a joint post to talk about that idea. I am writing here first, David will post a response on his blog or in the comments here.
Sales Is More Than Checking Boxes
A well-designed sales process has much to recommend its adoption. It provides a roadmap, it keeps salespeople focused on potentially high value activities, and in the best cases it can be a differentiator in and of itself. However, a sales process, no matter how well it is designed, is not enough to ensure success in sales. For any sales process to be effective, it needs to be utilized by a fully engaged sales person.
It isn’t enough to simply check the boxes, change the deal stage in your SFA to update your pipeline, and keep your sales manager happy (and clueless).
Full Engagement
What is full engagement? It means being mindful. It means not simply going through the process or going through the motions. It means being thoughtful about every activity in every stage of the sales process. It means using the three-pound, pinkish-gray computer under your skullcap to discern what is working and what isn’t working. It means making adjustments when what you are doing is not moving you closer to sale.
It means bringing passion to you work (yes, passion!). Full engagement means bringing your A game to every sales call, finding a way to create value for both your prospect and your company. Full engagement is the currency of real professionals. It is one of the reasons they are so effective.
On Not Checking the Box
Sometimes it is very easy to check the box, even when you haven’t really achieved the outcome you needed to achieve to advance the sale. The real “art” of sales has less to do with the ability to build rapport; the real “art” of sales has everything to do with being creative and resourceful enough to recognize when checking the box isn’t going to advance the sale and coming up with something that will. The ability to advance deals that would stall for other salespeople is truly is one of the primary differences between the top 20% of salespeople and the other 80%.
No salesperson is hired to simply check the box. You have to be more than that; you have to be someone who thinks outside the (check)box.
Related posts:
- Thoughts on GTD and Sales Bill Rice from Better Closer has a post that the David Allen Company has republished. I agree with much of what Bill writes about using...
- Sales Process Problems: Turn by Turn Guidance is Unavailable David Brock, Provocateur David Brock at Partners in Excellence writes one of my favorite blogs. Last week he wrote a piece titled But We Have...
- Trust Agents, Pac-Man and Closed Systems Read Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and you will come across...
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Anthony: Fantastic! I couldn’t have expressed this issue better myself. You really hit the issues head on. The sales process is jsut part of the process. Thoughtful, creative, active engagement on the part of sales professionals in executing the process is absolutely critical.
We seem to be abusing the roadmap analogy—why stop here. In one of my earlier comments, I stated the sales process is a roadmap. It provides general guidance, but doesn’t show every pothole or every curve, hill, dip in the road.
Likewise, having a roadmap is useless unless you have a skilled driver! It’s the skillful and thoughtful execution of the sales professional that wins deals. They can “push the limits” both of the “car” and the “road.” They read the nuances in the road, temporary obstacles, avoid the potholes.
As you know I am a strong advocate of great sales process. But the most critical element is the sales professional.
Fantastic article!! You’ve got me thinking, I’ll have to post something more later this week.
As a sales manager I used the sales process to primarily insure my team was following our most important step, modelling out the impact of our enterprise application. This step was significant and required alot collaboration between our prospect and the sales team. Cocky sales people tried to take short cuts and ended up impacting our margins by not effectively modelling out our impact. I am a believed in a sales process and your comments as well.
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