Sales people and the actions they take are predicated on their "Sales Belief System". Your belief system is a collection of thoughts which drive the actions you take. In order to succeed in sales you need to understand what actions you need to take and then build a "supportive belief system" to support and drive those actions. You also need to explore your current belief system and determine if your beliefs (thought processes) are sabotaging your efforts (our individual sales person assessment can help you explore and understand your belief system).
An example of a non-supportive belief follows:
"I believe I need to educate my prospect on the features, benefits and advantages of my products/services in order to make a sale" is a non-supportive belief that will negatively impact your sales performance. This belief is often created unwittingly by companies that tend to focus more on product training and less on "sales process training". The problem with this belief is that through the education of your prospect you often provide a "shopping list" that helps them shop or write RFP's that are designed to drive your margin into the toilet! This condition is identified in our training programs as "free consulting".
Often the reason sales people engage in a "feature dump" is they believe it demonstrates their knowledge to the customer which builds their credibility. Although I believe a sales person needs to be "credible" I also know that demonstrating it through product knowledge is risky and has negative implications that will lower your winning and margin percentages. We need to find a lower risk way that demonstrates credibility without putting us at risk. Ou.r Value translation strategy accomplishes that
The change that you need to make is to create a new supportive belief. Change your thinking and decide that it is "the prospects job to educate me on why they need my product and how it will benefit their business." This new "supportive belief" will drive you to ask questions that will help you determine if the prospect qualifies for your knowledge. It is the beginning of building a "supportive sales belief" that gives you the edge.
In upcoming posts I'll use this blog as a forum to discuss this belief as well as many others that affect sales performance. Hopefully, as you continue to be exposed to this forum it will help you build your own "supportive sales beliefs" and drive your own personal success.
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