In our experience, an organization’s ability to excel in execution is linked to its ability to impeccably execute in sales. However, a large share of the customers we come across struggling with sales, have a deeply rooted belief that great sales practices are a result of finding those exceptional ‘naturally born salespeople’. Thus, when confronting adverse sales situations, they often end-up in relentless people replacement cycles that rarely pay-off. We have a different belief sustained by research and experience.
Ample sales research points to the contrary. In fact, only 20% of salespeople are naturally born sellers, while the remaining 80% are developed. With this in mind, at Trivium we believe that like any other serious discipline or critical function, sales development requires acquiring and practicing the right mindsets and skills coupled with a process framework that delivers exceptional, sustainable and consistent results.
TRIVIAM CONSULTING'S SALES EXECUTION FRAMEWORK
We have structured our approach towards sales execution around four components. Together they enable an organization to create the human capabilities and the technical infrastructure to succeed in sales, by creating meaningful long-term client relationships that deliver true business value. Although not all projects encompass all the components – end-to-end projects follow this natural progression.
COMPONENT 1: DIAGNOSIS
We have structured our approach towards sales execution around four components. Together they enable an organization to create the human capabilities and the technical infrastructure to succeed in sales, by creating meaningful long-term client relationships that deliver true business value. Although not all projects encompass all the components – end-to-end projects follow this natural progression.
The six dimensions are: Sales Methodology, Sales Process, Sales Management Infrastructure, Sales ExecutIon Rhythm, Sales Tools and Information and Planning and Forecasting infrastructure.
COMPONENT 2: SALES METHODOLOGY Selecting and implementing a sales methodology sets the foundation for how your team will approach the sales process, aligning to your customer’s buyer journey and ensuring professional, impactful and valuable interactions throughout the cycle. We believe sales is most successful when it's a "pull" activity and not a "push" activity. The best consultative approach is not "sales" in the traditional sense but rather about how to accompany the buyer throughout their own buying and consideration process. Buyers go through the same stages of consideration every time something is purchased, be it large or small. The following diagram illustrates the buying process we take sales teams through as we shift from pushing a hard sell to pulling the client in through involvement and consideration as they pass through the buying steps.
Our Consultative Selling approach is built on three driving principles that sit at the heart of all sales discussions. These driving principles are: Focus on the Customer, Persuade Through Involvement and Earn the Right to Advance.
Focus on the customer sounds familiar, however, time and again, we find that sales focus more on the product, solution or company they are selling than on what really matters most to clients and customers. We reframe the meaning of this common phrase so that salespeople see customers in a different light and approach them with the curiosity required to serve them as fully as possible.
Persuade through involvement is about allowing customers to lead the consideration of what most interests them. In doing so they convince themselves verses needing to be convinced. In fact, can anyone really ever convince another person who does not allow themselves to be convinced? The most powerful conclusions are the ones we arrive at ourselves. Persuading through involvement is all about involving the customer in the discussion through questioning strategies that has them draw powerful conclusions that sell themselves.
Earning the right to advance is about being and staying on the same page as the customer. Too often, salespeople jump to solutions mode and start providing answers before the customer is ready. We teach sales reps how to explicitly earn the right to advance and gain the trust and confidence of their customer while doing so.
Sales Mindsets. As part of our diagnosis process, we speak to and observe salespeople prior to exposing them to new consultative selling skills. The result is that we are able to identify underlying beliefs – that we call "mindsets" – which inhibit effective sales conversations, relationship building and maximizing the chances of closing new customers. We then help salespeople shift from old beliefs and habits to new empowering mindsets that open a multitude of new opportunities that were not previously visible or available. Some of the most frequent mindset shifts we encounter working with clients are:
This adaptive learning approach plays a fundamental role in driving sustainable transformation of your team’s sales ability.
Fundamental selling skills. Like in sports, success revolves around being excellent at the fundamentals. In sales, there are five fundamental selling skills that research shows the best salespeople use consistently throughout their interactions with prospects and clients.
Each of these fundamentals has a unique purpose throughout the consultative selling process.
Connection is about how we establish a personal bond and rapport with customers. This goes beyond the initial contact and is develop throughout the relationship.
Encouragement is about using gestures and facial expressions to keep the customer engaged and talking, to reveal more relevant information that will help you, serve him better.
Questioning is the most powerful skill in any salesperson's arsenal. Through closed, open and high-gain questions, sales reps gather in-depth information about the customer's situation, issues, needs, problems, benefits and aspirations. Effective questioning techniques help distinguish salespeople form their competition.
Confirming is the way to make progress explicit during sales conversations.
Finally, providing is about giving information to the customer that creates a clear, articulate vision for the solution, while at the same time creating a positive image of the salesperson, their organization, and its products and services.
Through this consultative approach to selling, you will empower the buyer to co-create a solution to his business challenge based on your capabilities and services, thus maximizing your chances of closing the deal.
Building powerful sales mindsets, behaviors, and fundamental skills is crucial to help salespeople take their capabilities to the next level. However, to fully excel in your sales capabilities, you will need a sound Sales Process and an effective Sales Management capability.
COMPONENT 3: SALES PROCESS
In Phase 3 we look at how your organization currently sells and together, we personalize your Sales Process – a detailed roadmap – tied to Customer Based Evidence that ensure you follow and stay aligned to the buyer every step of the buyer journey.
The Structured Sales Process (SPP) is a set of repeatable steps that a salesperson takes to accompany a prospective buyer from the early stage of awareness to a closed sale. This sequence of steps describes a process based on best practices and include: Phases, Roles, Probability, Activities and customer-based Evidence Milestones. The SSP tends to be reflected in the opportunity management system and it’s the basis for the management of the Pipeline (Sales Management).
There are important benefits to defining and implementing a sales process for your sales team to follow.
It is a clear path to for salesreps to follow.
Facilitates assimilation of the Sales Methodology.
Replicate a research and empirically successful approach.
Increases predictability and accuracy.
Accelerates onboarding.
Creates a ‘common language’ between sales reps and managers that drives accountability, focus and precision when discussing and debriefing opportunities as well as when assessing forecast commitments.
The Structured Sales Process sets the foundation of what we do, and the Sales Methodology defines how we go about it. These two elements come together in the final component of the Sales Execution Framework – the Sales Management Platform.
COMPONENT 4: SALES MANAGEMENT
The last element of a successful Sales Execution platform is about creating the infrastructure to effectively execute, manage and track your sales. During this phase we create a management platform comprised of processes, tools, metrics and meetings designed to:
Manage the sales and Forecast through the Pipeline.
Stablish a regular execution rhythm and calendar for the year.
Personalizing and setting-up the tools infrastructure that will enable the organization to track the opportunities and create a pipeline-based Forecast and Budgeting process.
Definition of a set of metrics to assess status and track the performance of the demand generation (marketing) and sales organizations, including portfolio indicators, conversion ratios, close ratios and sales cycle duration metrics.
Re-enforce sustainable adoption of the process and methodology through ‘sales coaching’ for the Managers and the sales reps. This gets done through a system comprised of four types of regular and professionally designed meetings: Pipeline Review, Opportunity Review, Forecast and Planning meetings. Through these sessions we enable the organization to:
Have an informed and broad view of the opportunity (through the Pipeline).
Early identification of opportunity risks.
Accelerate the flow of opportunities through the sales process.
Optimize resource management and investment in key opportunities.
Strike a proper balance between seeding and harvesting – a usual challenge for many sales teams.
CONCLUSION
Your organization’s overall ability to execute with excellence is the results of focusing on a set of very specific and actionable elements around Purpose, People and Process. At Triviam Consulting we also believe that there are some of the organization’s subsystems that are critical in the process of achieving exceptional and sustainable results. And increasing your Sales Execution Capabilities is one of them. The above framework has proven over and over to be an effective roadmap to take your sales team to the next level.
Comments