Interesting take by our friend Dave Stein (who btw writes Commentary on Sales Leadership, a great blog to read if you have a chance ) in Sales and Marketing Management called Hazardous to Your Wealth. The article discusses the problems caused by inexperienced sales reps relying on sales tips.
His first point is that reps need to be able to operate at both high and low level, but tips encourage a tactical, low level focus.
“The more tactics a sales person reads in the form of tips, the further he or she gets from the real key to winning: developing and executing a higher level, overall strategy to win.”
His second point refers to getting exposed to bits and pieces but not truly learning how to sell better.
“Since most salespeople don’t have the knowledge and experience to determine what works and what doesn’t, and no one is providing them with a curriculum, they generally choose only the tips they perceive are easy to accomplish.”
He notes that if a tactic doesn’t work the first time, many reps will outright reject the tip rather than working to develop the skill and improve their selling results.
“Companies that have a formal, institutionalized sales methodology (read: strategy for winning) consistently sell more effectively than the ones that don’t.”
In our experience, this is a trap that younger sales reps fall into and particularly those that have been raised in a world that caters to short attention spans with a diet of headlines, briefs, one liners and sound bytes and (…twitter, text messaging, etc, and who reads books anymore anyway??).
His parting advice is to do your reps, your company, your customers and yourself a favour by integrating the most relevant tactics into a strategic documented sales approach. Good advice.
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