Part 1 – This is an excellent blog and should be circulated to sales managers and sales trainers throughout the country. The
selling environment today is certainly very difficult. Techniques that worked over the past 5 years, past year or even yesterday are ineffective today, yet so many of the old skill sets remain in active use.

Salespeople often confuse activity with effectiveness.
If I have all these great relationships and work hard, that’s all I’ll
need to do. I’m active. I’m busy. The truth is that “relationship building” and “hard work” can also be great hiding places. Sometimes we need to step back to honestly assess how truly effective our activity has been from an actual sales success standpoint. Yes, we make some sales through relationship-building, and yes, we make some sales through
other kinds of hard work. However…

Here are some questions to consider: Are we achieving what is possible? Is our “success” actually underperformance? How many sales are we missing because of our old skill set?
Because of the downsized and flattened nature of today’s corporate structures, companies need the skill set of a challenger. A challenger can be a strategic business partner without necessarily being on the payroll. Companies need all the help they can get in today’s competitive business environment – an effective challenger can help unlock the gap between current sales performance and what is achievable.

Sales leaders – you must call out of all those great hiding places and old skill sets in your sales workforce and zero in on what is effective and ineffective.

Sales trainers – you must ensure that you are training the right skills and the right mindset. Rehashing and reinforcing
yesterday’s skills and behaviors will be costly for your organization.

Part 2 – What keeps you up at night?

Excellent insight – I had never thought about the impact of
that simple question. Customers need their sales representatives to be strategic business partners. The goal of many salespeople is simply to generate a lot of sales to their customers.

Salespeople who can transition from merely a generator of sales to a strategic business partner with their customers will ultimately produce more business at a higher level of profitability. Salespeople can do this by focusing on the customer’s true needs rather than on what can be
sold to that customer.

Salespeople who invest their time and energy in becoming a
strategic partner with their customers will position themselves for success.