I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the science of selling and the art of selling, and how to balance them to maximize your personal impact. Like anything else, if you lean too much in one direction it can have an adverse effect. Too much science leaves people feeling cold and unappreciated. Too much art leaves people wishing for depth and action. How do you balance both?
The balancing act isn’t that difficult. It is fully utilizing your resources (CRM, Marketing automation, etc.) to find opportunities to work with. It is creating a plan and executing a process. The art is using your skills to ask questions to understand how you can help solve a problem, then deploying the solution you have in your ultimate value proposition that fits the customer need.
As a leader you may feel that hiring great salespeople and giving them the tools to work with is enough. You then rely on the team to make the right decisions and create leads and close them. You receive the results. Do you receive the results you want? That is a part of the equation, but not all.
The recipe for success is to build a strong strategy, utilize your systems/support tools to create a target rich environment, hire and develop the right salespeople, and execute your plan. You direct results versus wishing for results. Setting KPI’s for the process supports the end results of revenue and profit and you can measure and correct activities as you work.
I’ve been fortunate to partner with a great friend and business executive that has created the science portion. I’m the art or softer people side of the process. Together we are focused on creating opportunities that lead to productive sales efforts. Our clients are directing their results.
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