In this blog I will be writing about the 10 Key Activities for Success. These are the activities that a salesperson should be good at and should continually be trying to perfect. When I consult for a company, these are the activities that I measure, train, and mentor the team on. They are a good indicator of a salespersons ability across the sales process and their ability to succeed in the long term. In fact, I will map each of these actions to their corresponding role in the sales process at the end of this blog. If you can master these actions, you will become an effective and successful sales professional. So let’s get going.

Here are the 10 Key Activities for Success:
1. Pick the right companies (Research)
If you are an effective salesperson, you understand the importance of time management. You do not want to waste your time calling people who do not have a need, will not buy from you, and will waste your time. So picking the right company becomes critically important to your time management. You want to have some indication that there is light at the end of the tunnel before you start your prospecting activities. So how do you pick the right companies to prospect? There are many methods and attributes for selecting the best company to call, all of them with a good premise. I recommend that you create a prospect scoring tool that looks at multiple criteria to create an overall prospect score. Then you can rank the prospects and call on the highest scoring. This is the best way I found unless you find the “One”. What is the “One”? It is the one need that if a client has it; it matches your product or services so well that you should win the deal. Maybe it is a client who has international, multi-lingual sites and your product is the best content management system for managing multiple language sites. In that case, if you find an international client who has just an English speaking site, they would be your “One”. The best thing you can do when prospecting is to find those clients that meet that “One” criteria in your industry. But in most cases there is not a “one” or there is not enough to go around. In those cases, I recommend creating a prospect scoring system for your other prospects.

2. Find the right contacts (Network)
In most sales positions, there is probably no bigger determinate of success than your ability to network. Even better is when you can network with purpose. What is the difference? Networking means you go to events and you meet people by chance. When networking, you can enhance the probability of meeting the right kind of person by the type of event you attend. For example, there is a good chance to meet medical professionals if you go to a medical convention. But who you meet is still chance. Networking with a purpose means going to an event with a plan to meet several specific people. The act of having a plan will increase the probability that you will meet the contact, and by maintaining the focus on why you are at the event, you will probably meet more random contacts as well. Regardless if you network by chance or by plan, just the act of networking will increase your business network and that will increase your chances for success. So have a personal networking plan that helps you to continuously build up your network.

3. Reach the right contacts (Prospect)
This is about getting to the person you have identified as a target buyer. Whether it is by getting to them through networking, a partner referral, association, group, or other creative means. The better you are at reaching an identified target, the better you will be at your job. The more conversations you have with prospects, and the more success you will have. Being good at getting to prospects does take thought, intelligence and creativity. The more creative you can be, the more likely you will succeed in getting to your intended target. I like to ask salespeople to tell me about a time when they used a creative method to reach a client. Why? First, if it is a good approach, I will write it down in case I ever need an idea to help me reach someone. Second, if they can’ tell me a time they did this, then they are probably not that good of a salesperson. If you haven’t had to do this, you are either selling a product that is so hot the prospects are calling you, or you are probably struggling to make quota. All of us have had to be creative. All of us have had to come up with an ingenious way to get to the right person. So when you can, share stories and tips with other sales professionals. It is will help you create new ways to getting the right person to have a conversation.

4. Offer the right message (Position)
After spending the time to get to a target, you better have a well-directed message. The more research you have on the target, the better off you will be at creating a message that will resonate with them. The better you are as salesperson in the delivery of the message, the more success you will have. I am a proponent of taking past situations, articles, case studies, facts, and figures to tell a story that is both compelling and interesting. The more interesting, the more likely the client is to respond. When possible, try to make it emotional in some form. Form an emotional bond and you are more likely to convey what you want, and to get to the next stage.

5. Ask the right questions (Discover)
After picking the right company to call on and getting to the right person in the company, the next most important activity is asking the right questions. Good questions are not about you getting the information you need, rather they are about helping the client get the answers they need. These answers will be about you and your solution, but more importantly, they will be about helping the client determine what they need to do to sell the project internally. For example, most salespeople think that qualification questions are about getting enough information to decide to move forward or not. And they are, but not in the context they think. Qualification questions are for the purpose of helping the client think through their internal process to determine their probability of getting something approved. Qualification is first in the mind of the buyer. Once you and the buyer have decided it is qualified, then you can qualify your probability of winning. Most sales people ask qualifying questions as if they are a check list. But if done right, these questions can help the buyer walk through the buying process to see if there are any pitfalls or concerns with them getting approval. Only after you have helped the buyer think through the process, should you start thinking in terms of the likelihood of succeeding. The funny thing is that by doing it in this way, you are increasing your value to the client and improving your likelihood of winning.

Good questioning techniques are like having the right tools in your tool belt. BANT, INVESTIGATE, Value Added Questioning, Vision Pain Cycle, and SPIN are great questioning techniques for different situations. A sales person should learn them and practice them at every opportunity. In my next blog, I will be discussing blending some of these models into a cohesive sales process. Regardless of the model you use, if you can master the art of questioning, you will develop stated needs, find additional needs, help add value, and create justification. In short, you will win more business.

6. Convey the right benefits (Influence)
Conveying benefits is certainly important as well. Conveying the right benefits is dependent upon you knowing the clients main motivators for action and how you need to influence the ranking of those motivators and position your services to win. I really like the Challenger Model for conveying benefits. It is a great way to influence and position. But no matter what model you use, you should be able to influence decision criteria and convey the business value of the solution. You should also be able to convey the emotional, financial, and user benefits as well. Building a benefits matrix is a great way to do this. There are tools for building a quick benefits model, but the main thing to remember is that the benefits only matter if they are stated for explicit needs. Needs that are nice to haves will not move the client to action. Do not get sidetracked or distracted by benefits that do not directly address a client’s primary needs; particularly their emotional and business justification needs. Once you understand the real needs that need to be solved, you can then influence how they will evaluate and weigh the benefits in a way that impacts the decision criteria to match your strengths (Positioning).

7. Offer the right solution (Solutioning)
Once you understand the problem and business benefits, and you have properly influenced the position, you can move on to creating the right solution. Whether it is a service or product, creating a solution means you solve a problem or allow the client to take advantage of an opportunity. Creating the right one means that your solution is the right fit, at the right time, at the right place, for the right person or people. In other words, your solution addresses the most important considerations better than anyone else can and it is at a reasonable price. A salesperson needs to be able to understand the solution and how it meets the needs of the client. They need to be able to present the solution in a professional way so the client understands the merits of the solution and acknowledges that the solution is the best approach for the money (value).

8. Shape the right evaluation (Orchestrate)
This is probably the toughest activity that a salesperson must do. Orchestrating the sale means conducting tasks like foot-printing the solution with the buyer’s organization, conducting a team buy/team sell process, preparing the client champion, and using questioning techniques to influence the decision criteria. All of these activities require experience, interpersonal skills, and the ability to influence others. These can be difficult skills to learn. But if you do, you will most likely be a top performer and sales leader.

9. Drive the right conclusion (Close)
I usually hate the word “closing”. Most sales training presentations are about great ways to close. They act like if you did everything wrong, don’t sweat it, because with great closing techniques you can win the deal. And maybe it is true is small sales. But in bigger sales, if you have to close, you probably did everything else wrong. Or at least missed something in the process. In driving the right conclusion, you will verify and influence the decision criteria again, reposition your solution to show that you meet the criteria, answer remaining questions, and remove any conflicts. You are helping to solve the last minute issues that pop up because of price sensitivity, buyer’s remorse, or just fear of making a bad choice. And most importantly, make it easy for the customer to buy. Resolve any obstacles. Make sure all your internal processes are handled so the buyer can say yes. And when possible, help the client resolve their internal issues, too. Time kills deals, so make it easy for them to buy NOW

10. Document the right agreements (Confirm)
Buyer’s remorse is a real occurrence with most buyers. Once they buy they are worried about if they made the right choice and if it will work correctly. So before you can sign you must handle that remorse. It usually shows up as a final negotiation at the end of the sales process when price is most heavily on the mind of the buyer. So you may have to give a little. But be prepared, you can give things beyond price. And you should get things when you give price discounts. An important point to remember is that you cannot say anything that will make the buyer feel less remorseful. Only that person can change their perception. Using good questioning techniques that let them reach their own conclusions is the way to influence the buyer into resolving their own remorse.

So these are the 10 things that a sales person should do. By breaking these tasks down you can prepare training programs for each. This will be the best way for you master each skill. If you can master these activities, you will be a seasoned, professional, and you will be in the top of your chosen profession. How you do these will further improve your skills. You can build your reputation, and the company’s brand, by performing these with:
• Preparation
• Accountability
• Expertise
• Professionalism
• Integrity
• Exceptional Communication
• Joy

So to finish this blog, let me show where each of these activities fall into the Sales Process.

Prospecting: Networking / Pick the Right Companies / Getting to the Right Contacts / Offer the Right Message

Investigation:  Ask the Right Questions / Offer the Right Message

Qualification: Ask the Right Questions / Offer the Right Message

Solutioning: Ask the Right Questions / Offer the Right Solution

Selling: Shape the Right Evaluation / Shape the Right Conclusion

Contracts: Document the Agreement

So I hope this has been of help to you. If you have comments or feedback, please share it with me at 407-489-4032 or tommy.simon@techbaa.com. And until next time, I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity.

h them. The better you are as salesperson in the delivery of the message, the more success you will have. I am a proponent of taking past situations, articles, case studies, facts, and figures to tell a story that is both compelling and interesting. The more interesting, the more likely the client is to respond. When possible, try to make it emotional in some form. Form an emotional bond and you are more likely to convey what you want, and to get to the next stage.