Special Event: Transform Your Sales Culture. Join Gene Marks and me on March 30, 2012 to learn how to upgrade your sales technology and increase your sales! Plus, you’ll get copies of our books – Everyone’s in Sales and In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash. For details, click here and to register, click here.
Voicemail. Email. More voicemail. A few more emails. Wondering what is going on. Making excuses in your mind why the prospect is not calling you back. Talking with your manager about all the possible scenarios as to why the deal you have been working on (and forecasting) has not closed. More email. Maybe another voicemail. Complete exasperation. Staring at your CRM and pipeline wondering, Will you ever be able to mark this deal as closed?
Thought leaders earn respect. Sales professionals who distinguish themselves as being thought leaders are more likely to earn respect and get the deal closed. I believe this passionately and completely. Sales professionals as thought leaders? Is that an oxymoron? No! You heard it here first!
What is your organization’s unique value proposition? When all employees in your organization understand the value proposition well enough to articulate it in any situation, they become highly valued members of the sales team and, ultimately, an integral part of the sales culture.
As a sales professionals, we are all accountable to drive the correct activities that produce results. We all know this. When you are thinking about your pipeline or are in a discussion about your pipeline, do you find yourself saying “Well, I feel really good about my pipeline,” or “I have been having some great meetings,” or perhaps “I am pretty sure I have enough to make my numbers”, or “I think I can hit the targets”? Do you find yourself saying these things?
As a sales professional who’s developing a sales culture, what do you expect from your colleagues? Are they shaped by your expectation that they are part of a sales culture and accountable to the client and to one another? Do you engage, motivate, and inspire others in the organization to be part of sales campaigns?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what makes certain sales professionals better than others. More specifically, what gives some sales professionals that “edge”? Do elements just exist naturally within the DNA of great sales professionals that you can’t teach? There are many factors that set certain sales professionals apart from the rest, and today I’m declaring that one such essential element is a sense of “intuitive curiosity” (IC). Do you have IC? How do you know? In this month’s feature, I share the seven basic traits of IC.
