Overheard at the water cooler.
- Which sales close is your favorite?
- How do I manage a sales funnel?
- Sales if the biggest part of our HR budget.
- I don’t like sales people.
- One job I will never have is selling.
- We need to hire a new sales person.
- Those telephone sale people drive me nuts.
- Cold calling is the most important part of selling.
- We have sales people and when they are not playing golf they are taking people to lunch or the ball game.
- Sales people created the 3-martini lunch and are proud of it.
We all have opinions about sales, selling, sales persons and the impact those things have on us. We have had bad experiences with sales people, sales process, sales policies, sales systems and the feared sales pitch.
Sales is one of those things every one of us has an opinion on, feelings about and we know we could fix if we were just given the chance.
Since we all know so much about it why are the two following questions so hard to answer?
Question 1 — What is the operational definition of selling?
When you know the operational definition of selling you can answer the following:
- What is the cost of an hour of selling?
- How will I measure how well we are doing it?
- How will I know I am getting my money’s worth of the systems and people?
- How will I get more of it from my systems and people?
- How will I improve it?
- How will I know it when I see it?
- How will I train others how to do it?
More often than not the sales cost show in the budget is the largest single item so with that size of investment we better be sure we know EXACTLY what selling is.
Question 2 — Which of these are covered by the operational definition:
- Networking
- CRM data entry
- Driving
- Cold calling
- Servicing a new customer
- Customer training
- Figuring out the pricing
- Input on new products
Businesses and people act like they know the answers to these two questions. If you know the answers you can intentionally manage your business and your job. If you don’t know the answers every decision and every day is random with “hope” as the plan for success.
The following are the answers to the two questions. If you got the answers right congratulations and you are on the way to predictably growing sales and profitable revenue. If you didn’t get them right take these answers to explore what you need to do next.
Question 1 — What is the operational definition of selling? — Selling is moving a DEAL forward! (no qualified deal – there is NO selling)
Question 2 — Which of these are covered by the operational definition: NONE
- Networking Marketing
- CRM data entry Admin
- Driving Admin – (but sales people must do it – not selling activity)
- Cold calling Marketing
- Servicing a new customer Marketing or Delivery
- Customer training Delivery
- Figuring out the pricing Marketing and finance
- Input on new products Marketing