The 3 Essentials of Sales Success
Let's get down to basics. Many sales teams build complicated systems and processes that are supposed to help them sell. And that's a shame, because that complexity can blind you to the fact that selling is really a rather straightforward activity. In fact, your success in sales depends almost entirely upon three very simple things:
- The quality of your prospects. If you're calling on the people who are likely to buy, you're going to make more sales. If you're calling on people who aren't likely to buy, you're wasting your time.
- The quality of your presentation. If your sales presentation makes a persuasive case that the prospect should buy now, from you, then you'll close business. If not, you'll spin your wheels.
- The number of people you see. If the first two elements are correct, your ability to sell is only limited by how many times you can give your presentation to qualified prospects.
Please note the above (even #2) holds true even in consultative sales situations, because if you improve #1, you'll have a minimum of questioning and solution-building before you can move to presenting and closing.
The above is based on a conversation I had a couple of years ago with Tom Black, author of "The Boxcar Millionaire." He's an old-school sales guy (started in the business selling bibles door to door), but I think he's on target when he talks about attending to the basics.
READERS: Is Tom right about this? Or is there something missing?