Do you already have a sales process in place? Most companies do…because it makes sense to have consistency and a common language across an organization.
But, just defining the steps of the sales process no longer gives sales teams a competitive advantage. Your competitors have a process in place, too, and it’s likely that the steps of their sales process are virtually identical to yours.
Implementing CRM software creates a similar paradox. Customer Relationship Management systems were designed to automate the sales process, enabling companies to capture, store, and share customer information, in order to improve operational and organizational effectiveness.
While formalizing a sales process and implementing CRM may help sales leadership or companies as a whole, neither increases the individual salesperson’s ability to more effectively execute the various steps of the sales process.
So, what’s more important…organizational effectiveness or execution?
Fortunately, companies no longer have to choose one or the other. Question Based Selling serves as the execution layer that enhances the strategic effectiveness of your existing sales process as well as any other management tools or tracking systems you may already have in place.
The Next Generation of Sales Enablement
Golf is a sport that’s pretty straightforward. Anyone can purchase the same striped shirts, white pants, and embroidered caps that you see golf professionals wear on television. Once properly outfitted, all you have to do is smash your drive 300+ yards, carve your iron shots toward the flagstick, and then putt the ball into the hole. Easy, right?
Wrong! There’s a reason why top-ra
ted golfers are making millions playing the finest golf courses in the world every weekend. Yet they don’t all win. Even when a group of well-intentioned golfers (or salespeople) are ‘armed’ with the same goals, objectives, and tools, they can experience very different results.
With any profession, the difference between top performers in their field and those who struggle generally boils down to one thing—the ability to execute. Anyone can have a clear understanding of “what to do.” But that’s very different than actually teaching people “how” to execute more effectively.
Learning “how” to execute more effectively is just as important in selling as in golf, or in any other endeavor, for that matter. Even those who have enjoyed sales success in the past must recalibrate and adjust their approach because the field on which the game of selling is now being played has changed dramatically.
Sales drives every company, yet selling continues to be the least taught profession in the world. While it’s impossible to earn a degree in selling from the Harvard Business School, every Harvard graduate’s success will ultimately depend on the effectiveness of their company’s sales organization. —Thomas A. Freese
Whether you sell manufactured goods, healthcare, energy, technology, pharmaceuticals, or real estate, if you want to increase your sales effectiveness, you must focus on “how” to execute more effectively. This includes learning how to:
- Increase your “hit rate” when calling new prospects.
- Make lead generation a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Broaden the scope of existing opportunities.
- Establish more credibility early in the sale.
- Motivate many different types of buyers.
- Escalate the prospect’s sense of urgency.
- Sidestep the root causes of buyer resistance.
- Identify key decision-makers and influencers.
- Deliver more impactful product presentations.
- Prevent objections in addition to handling them.
- Qualify and accurately forecast sales opportunities.
- Ultimately close more sales, at higher margins, faster.
Sales effectiveness no longer revolves around your sales process or CRM system, or even the idea of asking good questions. The real skill in selling today is execution—knowing how to execute more effectively than your competitors, in order to separate yourself from the rest of the ‘noise’ in the marketplace.
Thus, Question Based Selling™ is a conversational ‘toolbox’ filled with specific strategies and techniques that enable sellers to perform more effectively throughout the sales process in order to deliver both top and bottom-line results.
Experiential Learning is Key
Sales teams and marketing departments in competing businesses have been trying to out-describe each other for many years. As a result, industry buzzwords no longer convey significant value, and the typical ‘elevator pitch’ has become one of the quickest ways to commoditize your value proposition.
Our mission extends far beyond just training salespeople. QBS Research, Inc. delivers customized training, coaching, and licensing programs that give clients an ‘unfair’ advantage by teaching their sales teams “how” to execute more effectively given the ‘headwinds’ of today’s increasingly competitive business environment.
While customers tend to focus on 3 letters when making purchase decisions (ROI—Return on Investment), sales teams should place more emphasis on 5 letters. Sales effectiveness, production, and results are about working smarter, which includes increasing your return on invested sales efforts (ROISE).
People learn by doing. That’s why the most effective training programs are interactive and experiential, keeping an eye on the successful implementation of the material being presented. Said differently, what happens after the training is more important than the sales training itself.
Experiential learning enables participants to develop the comfort level needed to support the adoption of next-generation techniques and strategies, in addition to ‘culturalizing’ the QBS methodology throughout the organization to maximize the initial implementation and produce long-lasting results.
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QBS® is a registered trademark of QBS Research, Inc.