I think it’s first about the sales skill set of the salesperson. And how can you expect different results in the long run if your sales people keep using the same skill set?

Today there is greater effort to maximize sales, increase revenue and protect margins. The ten calls that once generated two customers have increased to twenty. Farmers must now become hunters.

When business or the economy is slow, sales management needs to focus on gaining a higher percentage of revenue from the existing opportunities. This takes a planned and precise approach to selling; an approach that must be customized for the organization and adopted by the entire sales force. New sales skills sets must be learned and reinforced, otherwise salespeople fall back on unproductive or destructive sales behavior even though they might have fancy CRM tools at their disposal.

For example, most salespeople do not follow a selling procedure that as a first step, establishes a Commitment Objective for every sales call. This is the number one mistake that all salespeople make. In fact, our research shows that salespeople will never reach their performance potential without a well-defined sales-call procedure they can follow and learn from. “Winging it” on sales calls has grim consequences – lost sales, extended sell cycles, margin erosion and no clear path to improvement. Bottom line: An increase in sales can be mediocre at best without following a proven sales procedure. Performance improves by as much as 50% when salespeople have a consistent game plan for their sales calls and know how and when to use the selling skills that matter.

Research proves that improvements in learning only five critical selling skills translate directly into greater sales performance. These skills can be taught and improvements in them can be measured. They are:

* Managing the Buyer/Seller Relationship
* Sales Call Planning
* Questioning Skills
* Presentation Skills
* Gaining Commitment