The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

If you’re a client of The Center for Sales Strategy, this message could be akin to “singing to the choir.” But even the greatest practitioners of customer-focused selling can benefit from a reminder, from time to time.  

Anyone who’s ever participated in sports, coached sports, or watched sports knows the object of the game is to win! We keep score throughout the game, because when the game is over we want to know who played the best and who deserves to be crowned the winner!  Salespeople in B2B sales are pretty much the same. They keep score by evaluating their new business conversion rates, by regularly analyzing their budget vs. goal numbers, by measuring renewals, and by consistently making sure they’re meeting their customer’s goals and ROI. When all of these things are positive… they consider that a win.  

Some say that salespeople are a dime a dozen. Basically, they have very little value.  On the contrary! In b2b sales, great salespeople can literally be worth millions of dollars to their clients’ business.

During the American Revolution, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved and signed by the Second Continental Congress setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom with the resolution of independence from Great Britain. Two days prior, John Adams wrote these words to his wife Abigail:

1. Surprise Business! – This is new business that comes your way because of your company’s great reputation, your connections in the community, or simply “being in the right place at the right time.”
2. Enterprise Business! – This is new business that you developed from scratch, business that would not have existed anywhere but for your efforts. These are prospects you specifically selected and then worked hard to get in front of. Once in front of these prospects, you nailed an important assignment during your needs analysis meeting, which led to the development of a tailored solution.

We all work hard and deserve a few surprises over the year, but if we don't have some enterprise accomplishments too, are we really selling?

If you’re in sales, it is not unusual to run into people (prospects) who tend to focus on the negative. In fact, some of us still run into people who consider the economy to be on the shaky side… as if we are still in the grips of the Great Recession. 

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to sit on the listening-side of a role-play, or act as an observer or manager while an eager account executive makes their pitch, you have likely witnessed that pivotal moment when a flawless presentation slides into pointless monologue.  It is like the rise and fall of a well-orchestrated opera, when the prospect is sending all kinds of positive signals… but the sales person presses on with their argument.  (They have a lot invested in the preparation of this presentation… and they’re going to darn well deliver it.)

Have you ever heard sales managers when talking about their sales team say, “Well, we can’t have all “A” players” or “he/she is a good “B” player and they can’t all be top sellers”? So my question is, why?