I was writing a Business Development Manager job description for our company yesterday and I started off with all the usual requirements – salesperson must be able to mine a database, make 50 calls a day, consult with clients…you know the typical list. Which most salespeople would nod at and say “Yep, I’m great at that!”.
In the middle of writing it I realised something: these were all surface-level, task-related issues and I needed to get much deeper and actually describe what I really want in a BDM. What is selling REALLY about in our environment? What is the stuff that great sales people are made of?
So here’s a non-exhaustive list which describes in REAL terms the types of behaviours that define selling in our environment. Hopefully you can get some use out of it and adapt it to your environment too!
Today’s 5 Key Sales Criteria for Success
1. Bringing people together – you don’t have to know the answers, as long as you know who does, and you can bring that team together with the client.
2. Being liked – you are the client interface, so if the client doesn’t like you, then they probably won’t do business with your company. What constitutes being liked? This simple question is really worth thinking about for your environment. (Clue: being liked in a business setting is different from a social setting). Here are the things that make clients like us:
- Answering the phone.
- Using their name.
- Showing an interest.
- Offering a professional viewpoint/opinion.
- Not wasting their time (if we can’t help them, we should just say).
- Asking insightful questions.
- Not having to repeat themselves.
- Receiving quality and timely information.
- Being followed up with respect and on time.
- Not being pushed – given space & data to make their minds up.
3. Being a sales maker – this is the “hassle” that you apologise for all the time, but you shouldn’t. Without the hassle things don’t get done. Businesses need people like you to provide the tremendous outbound energy to be a sales maker. It’s repeatedly asking others to do stuff, moving it up the priority list, organising them because they are hopeless and giving them SMART deadlines. It’s about motivating the resources around you to help win you business – by treating your role as a business within a business.
4. It’s about being really bold and adventurous – about putting your neck on the line, about winning business first and worrying about delivery later (this leads to innovation – if your company has the brains/resources then you can always deliver). It’s about knowing that courage wins new business, about making some big claims and telling clients with passion why you want to work with them. Big problems excite smart companies like you– the bigger the better! And you ALWAYS deliver, right?
5. It’s about loving the win – it’s about the dogged, merciless business of winning sales. It’s about realising that if you try hard enough you can always win – you have proved that before and you will prove it again. There are things you can be doing RIGHT NOW to help you win accounts you want – you just need to think creatively from the client’s perspective and you will come up with the answers.
Whenever we train groups of sales people we like to move beyond the ordinary, and give people insights into modern selling behaviours and philosophies like these. If you would like to treat your group to some truly outstanding sales training, give us a call!
