My lady has been reading a book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck.
Which to me sounds like a poorly rewritten, The Effective Executive.
Having not read it, I’m not ready to give a review of the book, but the premise is one that we should all pay attention to.
Which is sort of the point of the book, pay attention to the important things…not everything.
Recently I came across a piece from Salesforce that talked about how salespeople are getting bogged down by stuff in the modern world that makes them unsuccessful salespeople.
Combine that with the ideas in the two books above and I wanted to give you a quick refresher on being an effective salesperson in the modern age.
1. Focus on Outcomes Over Activity: In the modern world, it is almost a given that people will tell you some variation of “you need to do this…”
The truth is that you can’t and don’t need to be doing any one particular thing because you should really only be doing the things that are going to help you open opportunities for your business.
That’s why the modern effective salesperson has to start by focusing on the outcomes over the activities.
In this context, think about what will get you to success.
Is it meetings?
Is it closed deals?
Is it phone calls?
What is it?
Measure your success against the outcomes, not the activities.
2. Focus on the buyer’s needs, not what you think is important: I’ve sat in on some really bad decks and slideshows and pitches.
Most of them fail because they start from the wrong point of view.
Too many of them are focused on what I’m going to do for you, not what you need to get done.
That’s a huge leap.
To be successful as a modern seller, you have to realize that the prospect really doesn’t care about you at all.
They care about themselves.
So if you aren’t careful, they will bounce you out the door because you aren’t offering value from the jump.
To be successful today, focus on them…and they will tell you what you need to tell them.
3. Offer Value At Every Turn: Acumen is the king.
I know that many of you have heard of the book, The Trusted Advisor.
At the heart of that book is business acumen. Which is great in today’s selling environment because more than ever, we have to add value at every turn.
In The Challenger Sale, the authors talk about guiding the sales cycle and starting with insight.
That’s a great idea to consider, insight. Because insight allows you to create value from the start and can open the door to better knowledge of your target customers that’s done without all the clunky questions and pseudo-intellectual jibber jabber that passes for advice in too many sales trainings.
The key idea is that you need to focus on offering up value at every turn. You can call it insight, ideas, introductions. The only thing that matters is that you offer value in exchange for the buyer’s time.
Without that, you have nothing.
If you start thinking about these ideas as you approach your sales calls, you are going to be armed with better ideas to tackle modern selling.
I guarantee it.