While there are many schools of thought on how to sell effectively and properly, there are no standards for salesman that are set in stone. Nothing exists to set the bar for salesman because the field is so broad. However as information becomes more free flowing and selling becomes more sophisticated, a core set of principles or standards of selling can be outlined.
Geoffrey James of the bNET Sales Machine writes about such an outline in a recent post. The pyramid of sales standards, as he calls it, outlines selling standards from the ground up. This set of standards works particularly well because of the pyramid structure, where each layer relies on the foundation, or layers, below it. As a sales rep, it is paramount to have a solid foundation of sales activities and skills, such as making the right number of calls, managing prospects in an organized manner, etc. Having a weak foundation, or not handling the basics well, will cause your whole pyramid (your selling strategy and effectiveness as a sales rep) to crumble. In fact, you might not even reach the top of the pyramid (repeat business and ultimately being profitable) if you do not have a sturdy foundation of the essential sales skills.
James calls the second layer of the pyramid ‘Sales Skills’, or your skills in terms of how you handle the call, how you deal with prospects, and how and when you followup. While it is key to be organized and thoughtful in creating a solid foundation of sales activity, a large amount of effort is needed to improve you’re on the call and followup skills. Along with lots of practice, being prepared for the call is essential. If you take the time to do the research on your prospect’s company, you will be much better off when you actually make the call. Research will lead you to a better understanding of your prospect’s needs and how your solution can fill them. You also might find a news alert that gives you an opening: a new executive hire at your prospect’s company, or the company being given a large amount of funding, etc. Finding the right news event cannot only give you an advantage but can sometimes result in an easy sale. News may be hard to come by all the time, but the research will always pay off on some level.
However it is certain that you can better manage prospects and sales calls if you’re getting the latest and greatest updates about them all the time- whether it be from social networks, browsing the web etc. There are in fact platforms out there that can aggregate all this “hot” information for you, eliminating the majority of the time you spend researching so you can have more time to focus on closing the sale and improving the top levels of your “sales pyramid”. You can check out one of these platforms here.
