Has the Internet taken your Sales Offline? Part Six, The Basics are Crucial

There are many, many aspects and angles one could take in approaching the broad subject of sales. But for the moment let’s break it down into just three:

Its three core components of the salesperson, the customer and the actual service or product.
The overall internal structure, this would be the “pipeline” or sales process as well as the company in which sales take place
The surrounding and touching universe of the product, its features and benefits and such elements as competition, overall availability, specialty uses, target markets, etc.

To survive, surmount and flourish none of these can be ignored:

It is grossly insufficient to know only one’s product and one’s prices
Nor can one neglect how the salesperson interacts and interfaces with the team as a whole and the company at large
A lack of a full and commanding knowledge of the market, relevant technologies and competition is suicidal in today’s information world

Much has been said about the “sales process” of late. In some circles the topic of establishing such a process has come to be the universal remedy for any and all sales shortcomings. Just plug and play.

Without doubt the establishment of a successful pattern, whether it is called a “pipeline” or “process”, is vital in any business or organizational activity. Nothing succeeds for long based upon willy-nilly wanderings and so structure is very important.

But the structure is there only to house and direct activity. Activity occurs only when a live person is initiating or directing a motion. But profitable activity only occurs when people know their stuff and so can direct that activity to a worthwhile end.

While a business or enterprise will always face external challenges and legitimate problems it is impossible to separate the necessary from the needless, or a real problem from an avoidable problem, when personnel remain inadequately trained and fall short of full competence.

No where is this more obvious than in the sales area - it is and always will be a people business.

And so the door is wide open for placing the blame for problems and failures on emotional causes, vague external factors and other non-measureables. In fixing a pipe or replacing a tire the problem is physically evident. In repairing a sales process or team the elements can appear far more arbitrary, maybe it was a customer’s mood swing or the salesperson was just “off”.

While there is undoubtedly a place for speculative opinions, creative remedies and “out of the box” thinking all of these can often lead to system failure and manager overload. Why? For the simple reason that they are almost always laid in over broken “pipelines” and suffering players that are inadequately trained and practiced in their jobs.

While desperate times may call for desperate measures it is an overlooked fact that under those desperate times is an internally controllable cure – tackling the lack of knowledge, education and practiced familiarity in the sales team.

If one wants to see an area survive and prosper then those “pipelines” better be worked out and greased into place. And along that line, every person had better know their job cold and practice the actions of that job into full competence. Then all of this had better be integrated, monitored and maintained on a consistent basis. Only then can one count upon a stable area that has a real chance of surviving well.

This is more important today than ever. Sales teams can no longer leverage their controlling advantage in product access and insider information to create success. And so a new direction with several key steps must be taken:

An evaluation of how vastly the external world has changed and the internal shifts to be taken to meet those changes
A thorough examination and evaluation of one’s sales “pipeline” with remedy and reconstruction as needed
Address the raising of the overall training level and professionalism
Establishing how to monitor and maintain the above on a consistent basis so that the area does not fall back but continues to solidify it position and strength

Without building true professionalism, knowledge and real ability in a salesperson a company does not stand a chance in the 2.0 world.

It may seem like a lot but the alternative struggles are pretty rough too and certainly not any less work.

Have fun.

Written by

Thomas Soracco

Real Ability Software and Management Systems