(888) 815-0802What’s Your Personal Sales Method?
Every seller possesses their own unique way of selling.
If there are 2 million B2B sellers in the US, then there are 2 million unique sales methods that are being practiced everyday.
What’s your personal sales method?
What 5 words would you use to describe your personal sales style?
Are you process-oriented? Data-driven? Intuitive? Creative?Empathic? Knowledgeable? Product expert? Industry expert? Buyer-centric?
Take a minute and write them down. Don’t overthink it. Just write them down right now.
Done?
Ok, now go back and review the three most recent deals you’ve won. And your three most recent losses.
How does your self-described sales style align with how you actually performed on these deals?
How did your sales style help you win the deal(s)? How did it hurt you on the deals you lost?
Becoming a consistent winner in sales requires that you possess an unvarnished self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses.
Success also requires that you are following a plan to acquire whatever knowledge and understanding you need to constantly challenge yourself to improve.
So, take another look at the five words you’ve used to describe your selling method.
Do these words accurately describe where you stand right now in your career? Or are they more aspirational and describe where you want to be?
If there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, then what do you need to learn to get from here to there?
The only predictable way to close the gap between how you currently sell and how you wish you could sell is to keep learning and experimenting.
An important part of making these changes is to track and analyze which changes are working for you. What actions are helping you improve. And which aren’t.
To do this I recommend that you start keeping a personal sales journal. Use a note app like Evernote. (Why not document this in your CRM? Because this is personal. It’s your personal sales method.)
Keep putting yourself into a vast array of sales situations and be disciplined about documenting what words, questions, actions, tactics and content worked for you to help you win and what didn’t.
Spend 10 minutes at the end of each work day to review your day’s actions. Among the data points you want to document are the following:
What did you try in a sales interaction that was new and different for you?
- How was it received by the buyer?
- Did it help you achieve your objectives for that interaction?
- Did it help the buyer receive the desired value from the interaction?
Here’s a key point to remember. It’s not enough to document how something worked. You also have to think about and document why it worked. Until you have a firm understanding of why the way you sell is effective you’re basically just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks when you sell. That’s not scalable.
To improve you have to consciously learn from your experience. Document the details of how you sell. Analyze and come to a conclusion about why the way you sell works.
Then review your notes on a daily basis to remind yourself what you did, and why, on previous sales opportunities that are relevant to those you’re working on now.
