In business, sales is the most important strategy. Without sales there is nothing else. Think about it, we are in business to produce revenue i.e. make a living. To produce revenue, you have to actually convince someone to buy the product or service you produce. The only way to get someone to buy is for you and your team to sell.
So, if sales is such a vital business function, if it produces something as great as revenue, why do we do we struggle to do it? Interesting question. There is just something about the word “sales” that makes people cringe. Something about sales that has them conjuring up images of sales people who are sleazy, aggressive and pushy.
And that is a shame, because as Zig Ziglar used to say, everyone is in sales. As a business owner or leader, you know that to be successful you need every member to be as passionate and committed as you are. You not only need them to want to sell, you need them to be good at it.
Sales in some form or another remains in the top 10 concerns of CEOs and business owners. Things like meeting consumer demands, standing out among the competition, and increasing bottom line results. This makes getting your full-team motivated and onboard with sales one of the major challenges CEOs face today. And while you can’t actually motivate anyone to sell, you can create a culture that embraces sales and inspires every member of your team to take action.
So why can’t your team sell? Well, it may not be the reasons that you think.
4 Sales Strategies To Inspire Your Team To Take Action
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Lack of Financial Acumen
Getting your team to sell without understanding the why is like telling you to quit eating french fries without understanding the health benefits. Face it, we would all live on fried food, sugar and alcohol if we did not understand the fatal risks of doing so. So, if you want to inspire your team to take action, then they need to understand the why.
You need to increase their financial acumen. They need to understand how you make money, which products or service lines you want to grow, and how their actions impact the revenue stream of the business. The better your team understands how you make money, the better sales decision they will make. This includes decisions on selling on price, choosing the right prospects and negotiating deals.
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Don’t Know How
Believe it or not, no one is born a salesman. Sales is a skill that needs to be taught and consistently learned. Too often, as leaders we just expect that people know how to do it. We think it’s not rocket science. They just need to get past the gatekeeper, ask the right questions and close the deal.
We may not think it is rocket science, but to most people it is. Not understanding what steps to take when selling is one of the major reasons people are resistant to sell. If you want your team to be inspired to sell, then you need to invest in showing them how to do it.
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No Sales Process
In other words, no strategy or “set” way of doing it for your company. To be successful at sales, you need more than skill – you need a process. A sales process is systematic series of steps that lays out exactly what needs to be done to turn a prospect into a customer and a customer into a champion. The process gives employees the map of how to sell and what behaviors to focus on to be successful. It breaks down the cycle, making it less complicated and more achievable.
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Lack of Leadership
Yep, you knew that was coming. If your team can’t sell, you do not have a sales issue – you have a leadership issue. It all starts and stops with you. To sell and sell successfully, people need to be led. They need someone willing to share the vision with them, invest in their training, layout the process and hold them accountable. More often than not, when a team cannot sell or won’t sell, the biggest issue is lack of leadership.
There you have it – the 4 Big Sales Strategies You Need To Inspire Your Team To Take Action. Put these strategies into place, and let me know your impact. Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on inspiring your team to take action. Sales is the life blood of any company. The more you do as a leader to inspire sales, the better positioned you will be to succeed no matter what this economy does.
