When you are sick, medicine can help. But first it has to be the right medicine. And second, you have to take the medicine in the right dosage. Advice on how to sell better is the same.
You hear a lot of advice about the value of social media. Personally, I’ve benefited tremendously from content marketing and social media myself. I’m a great believer that content marketing is an extraordinarily helpful tool to put in the hands of already competent salespeople. But social media and content marketing needs to be used at an effective dosage. Using only social media and content marketing is too heavy of the dosage and, just like medicine, it can be very dangerous at high dosage. It can be even more dangerous when it’s not the right medicine.
You also hear a lot of people talking about the newest, latest and greatest sales methodologies. Insight-based selling is the hot hand right now. And for good reason. Too many salespeople struggle with opportunity acquisition, and the ideas that help create value for your clients in the way of new initiatives are worth sharing with them. But again there are two factors here. First, it needs to be the right medicine. Latent dissatisfaction is a problem, but it’s not always the problem. Second, it needs to be done within the effective dosage. Only teaching is pitching. Sometimes the right medicine is to listen, to learn, and to help your client with a problem they’ve already recognized.
One old cure-for-what-ails-you is almost nonexistent now: activity. No one wants to prescribe activity anymore. They don’t want to micromanage their employees, their salespeople. And the salespeople don’t want to be micromanaged either. So sales managers opt out by telling salespeople all their worried about is whether or not they can produce the outcomes. They believe the right medicine is effectiveness. And there’s nothing wrong with helping your sales force become more effective. But a lot of times what the sales force needs is a strong dose of the medicine that is activity. Activity is the remedy for the illness that is not enough activity. Doesn’t matter how effective you are, without activity you’ve got nothing. Activity is sometimes the right medicine, and it needs to be applied in the right dosage. In a lot of cases, it needs to be given in a very, very heavy dosage.
It’s important that you make the changes necessary to produce better results. This starts with making the right changes. But it also includes making the right changes in the right dosage.
Questions
How do you determine whether or not a solution is the right solution for the problem you’re facing?
How do you determine the correct dosage when you administer that solution?
Why do we fall in the trap of believing that the right solution is the only solution and must be applied in super high dosages, even to the exclusion of anything else?
How do you get the dosage right?
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