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Strengthening Your Sales Team By Improving Their Strategic Selling and Positioning Skills |
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Written by Jim Pancero
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Article #7 in our 9 Article Series
Welcome to our sixth article in the series “You Can Always Sell More: How To Improve Any Sales Force!”
In this article we will complete our discussion of the twenty question Sales evaluation by evaluating and discussing how to you can improve the strategic or positioning skills of your entire sales team.
Evaluating, And Improving A Sales Person’s Strategic Positioning Selling Skills and Abilities
The third and final skill area evaluated in the twenty question sales evaluation at GreatSalesSkill.com is your Strategic skills and abilities of selling. “Strategic” selling skills are defined as your ability to communicate your company’s philosophy and competitive market positioning. Strategic selling skills also involve your philosophy and commitment to ongoing training and your desire to want to get better. But Strategic skills tend to be the least developed skills within even the most senior sales professionals.
Increasing your strategic selling skills, along with your tactical skills (covered in our last article), are the two most critical “drivers” to increasing your competitive advantage. How strategically focused are your selling efforts and messaging?
What is your current message of competitive uniqueness?
Of all the Strategic selling skills, the ability to communicate a strong competitive message of uniqueness is the most critical. Yet the lack of a strong strategic message of uniqueness is one of the most common sales exposures in business today. Successful strategic selling is based on your ability to communicate a brief, consistent and organized customer focused message of how and why you offer more long-term value than your competitors.
Ask each sales team member to write down the three or four strongest key answers they would tell a customer or prospect asking “Why, based on all of the competitive alternatives available to me do I want to buy from you?”
Write all answers on a flip chart or white board. You will most likely notice everyone has different answers unless they are delivering the generic responses of “our high quality products, strong level of support, competitive prices and you get me.” You will also notice most answers only focus on themselves instead of their customers.
Improving Your Strategic Message Of Uniqueness
Want to help your team redefine their answer to this “Why buy?” question? Start off with the list you built to your team’s answers to this question. Develop another list of your toughest competitors including their strengths and weaknesses. Eliminate any common answers between your list and your competitor’s strengths. After selecting your best attributes list brainstorm how you can organize this into a simple message that includes why you are best compared to the competition.
After defining a solid message of uniqueness then test it out on your most loyal customers. Continue testing by next presenting it more customers until you feel ready to teach your new message to all employees that communicate with your customers.
What Is Your Philosophy Toward Ongoing Personal Development and Improvement?
Another Strategic area to strengthen is your ability to expand your skills and awareness. How open are you to new ideas and help from a coach?
Many older, or more experienced sales reps get lulled into feeling they are senior enough, or successful enough to not need to invest in any type of learning or growth. A person with a very large ego tends to make a very weak and disinterested student. How much work and effort have you been investing in your personal growth and learning?
How open are you to new ideas and suggestions…especially ones that require changing the way you have always done things? The best sales professionals realize that, no matter how good they are, they can always get better.
Consider the differences between selling and professional sports. Professional athletes spend over 90% of their time in planning, preparation and practice and only 10% in actual implementation. How much time do you spend in planning, preparation and practice?
Understand what top athletes have already learned. Your coach doesn’t have to be a better “player” than you are, they just need to understand how to help you be a better “player” than you are today.
What do you do if you do not have anyone at your company who can effectively help you to get better? Form your own coaching or support group. Everyone in the group acts as both a coach and someone who wants to be coached.
We know you are good...now are you good enough to get involved with a coach to help you get better?
In our next article we will discuss how you can develop a successful training and leadership strategy to help increase your sales team’s competitive selling advantage.
Want even more ideas? Then read my book “You Can Always Sell More - How To Improve Any Sales Force.” This 300+ page book outlines the entire process described in these articles. Call 800-526-0074 or go to GreatSalesSkills.com.
I congratulate you on working on strengthening your team’s selling skills and success. These strategic skill building ideas will help strengthen the skills and competitive advantage of your sales team. May you enjoy the process.
Reprint with permission “You Can Always Sell More – How To Improve Any Sales Force” ISBN #0-471-73915-4 John Wiley & Sons.
Copyright 2008 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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Jim Pancero |
| About the author: |
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Jim Pancero has been directly involved in "business-to-business" selling for over 35 years. Six of those years were spent successfully selling the largest computer systems for the Data Processing Division of the IBM Corporation. During Jim's prestigious IBM career he earned several awards including the coveted "Golden Circle" designation annually awarded to the top 5% of their international sales force.
In 1982, Jim founded his advanced sales training and consulting company. Since then, Jim has conducted over 2,500 presentations or consulting days for 500 companies providing a career average of five events per client. Over 90% of Jim's clients utilize his services more than once. www.pancero.com
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