We believe that salespeople are business leaders. By that we mean leaders in their own business specifically, and vital to the development of a vibrant sales culture from within. The success of any business will be delivered by many things, some of which are directly influenced by salespeople:
- Their approach to finding new customers. Is this in line with the company’s vision?
- Will the customers that your salespeople recruit be highly valuable for your business or will they become toxic and eat up future admin and management resource?
- Salespeople set the trend for the rest of your business. If they recruit and delight the right customers they set the groundwork for the ongoing health of the business.
But what about the salespeople themselves? What’s their view of this?
In high performing sales organisations we see the salespeople treating the business as if it was their own. Their sales targets are a guide but high performers set out to smash these targets.
These salespeople:
- Realise that new customers are the lifeblood of their business.
- Are highly proactive with their activity.
- Don’t wait to be told, or for a 1:1, to work warm sales leads.
- Know that building strong relationships is the key to success in sales.
- Make prospecting and more important, follow up, a way of life.
- Follow up every new business opportunity, and ensure next steps are planned and implemented.
- Ensure all methods of customer acquisition are explored and prioritised.
- Sell to meet needs at all times.
- Enjoy and thrive in being part of a vibrant sales culture.
On the other hand we see poorly performing salespeople doing very few of these things. It’s common to see them:
- Resisting proactive sales activity.
- Struggle to meet basic levels of activity and therefore struggle to hit sales targets.
So what so what sort of salesperson are you? What is your sales team like?
We see a lot of apathy in businesses today, with many employees not taking action they see is needed, and which is best for the business, and managers letting it go unchallenged. This absolutely applies to many sales teams.
We think that people should take a look outside their office window. Times are tough out there. Businesses are going under and others are laying off people, even salespeople.
The real security is performance. If you’re in a sales team do the things that high performers do and you’ll help to ensure that your business prospers, even in times like these. And you’re sales culture, and you’re business, will be rocking!!
Not only will you ensure the survival of your business, you’ll share in the rewards of success.
Why wouldn’t you do it?