Sales Performance: How Leaders Transform Results by Prioritizing the Art of Selling

Throughout the last six months, I have paid careful attention to what sales leaders talk about. It turns out that they spend a lot of time talking about sales. They talk about the pipeline, deals, and information and updates. What they don’t seem to do is spend their time talking about selling.

I confess that I am biased, as I believe the sales conversation is the largest variable determining the outcome of a pursuit of a prospective client. I also believe that how you sell is more important than what you sell. While it is all well and good that sales leaders talk about pipelines and deals, failure to talk about the act of selling makes you more likely to lose deals due to poor performance.

Empowering Sales Leadership: Strategies for Effective Team Selling

As a sales leader, you have the right and the obligation to decide how your sales team is going to sell—no matter if they learned some other approach or some ancient methodology that has outlived its effectiveness. Because you are charged with the results, you have the right to require your team to sell in the way you believe is most effective.

You will have sales reps who suggest they have their own style, which is an indication that they are comfortable with how they sell, even if they are not particularly effective. When some part of your team is succeeding and another part is failing, the first place to look to understand the difference is how they sell.

The Importance of Focusing on Selling Techniques Over Sales Figures

Sales and selling are not the same thing, even though we don’t often consider the difference. Sales leaders tend to talk more about the pipeline than they do about the selling itself. The sales leaders who are consumed by having more coverage in the pipeline, would do better to focus on selling, as the coverage does nothing for your results.

The more you talk about selling, the more your team will focus on it. If you believe that a salesperson wins a deal because of how they sell, you must also believe that they lose for the same reason.

Mastering Sales Conversations: A Guide for Sales Leaders

Some of the most effective sales organizations have sales leaders, although too few, who care about the selling. The more you talk about how your sales team sells, the more you make it a priority for your salespeople. There are many topics you can talk about to improve your sales results.

1. Your General Sales Approach: To help improve your sales results, you might start by talking to your team about the general approach they must use to succeed. For example, you find many salespeople using a transactional approach when they would improve their results by being consultative.
2. Your Sales Methodology: If you don’t have a methodology, you can improve your results by adopting one and causing your team to sell in a way that will help them get better results. Using a designated methodology allows you to talk about the selling itself, reinforcing the philosophy, the strategies, and the tactical execution.
3. How to Create Value: In this ever-evolving sales landscape, you need to talk to your sales force about how to create value for their prospects and clients. The more you talk about what your clients find valuable, the better their results. But the opposite is also true. Not talking about what your clients need from the sales conversation makes it difficult for your team to understand how to create value.
4. Your Obligations to Your Clients and Prospects: You can never go wrong by talking to your team about their obligation to their clients. Because the salesperson has many experiences helping their clients make a change, they are obligated to use their knowledge to guide the sales conversation, recognizing what the client needs to be able to successfully pursue their change initiative.
5. How to Approach Certain Sales Conversations: Selling has grown more complex over time. The conversations require business acumen, experience, and the talk tracks that allow the salesperson to sound like a business advisor, something more than an average salesperson. When your clients lack confidence and certainty, you need to talk about the different conversations your team needs to win deals.
6. What Not to Do: There are things salespeople need to succeed. There are other things that will cause problems winning a deal, things like not doing the research and the reading, using a legacy approach that will send the client to someone else, or believing they need only position their solution to win the client’s business.
7. Encourage Winners to Share: Your winners sell effectively. Whenever you have the opportunity, encourage those who sell well to share what they are doing that causes them to succeed, helping others to see what the winners are doing differently. They may not believe you, but they will have no trouble believing their peers.

More Talking about Selling

You don’t have to give up talking about the pipeline, even though the deals you need will only manifest through selling. The single vehicle for winning a deal is the sales conversation. The better your sales conversation, the better your sales team’s performance, and the greater their chance of winning.

When you have your team together, start the conversation about how you and your team sell. When a salesperson asks you for help, start the conversation about how they are selling, and what they are noticing, helping them by giving them the time they need to recognize the behavioral change that will solve their problem.

Leaving this article, review the numbered list above and start talking more about how your team is selling and how it contributes to their success. Do good work and take care of your team.