Consistent wins are as a result of strategy, not behavior.

Successful sales people are action oriented. They think in terms of doing something, often anything, and something will result. It is the old numbers game thinking. Action is always admirable but the problem is that it employs only behavioral actions and not strategies.

For many managers and sales personnel, learning to focus on a defined strategy and not just behavior can produce more immediate and lasting results.

To illustrate this point, I am reminded of an example where the young misses, after applying lipstick, had a habit of kissing the mirrors and leaving telltale smudges. This caused a lot more work for the janitor to remove these.

The option now was either enforce certain disciplinary action to stop this behavior or employ a strategy. The action could produce immediate results; however, the strategy could prove to deliver lasting and repeatable results. The latter won out.

Assembling all the girls in the washroom the principle pointed out how hard it was to clean the mirrors of their lip smudges. She asked the janitor to illustrate. He proceeded to dip his squeegee into a nearby toilet basin and then went vigorously about the business of cleaning the mirrors. As the story goes, there were no more lipstick smudges after this strategic example!

Strategies are more important than ever when it comes to CRM systems.

The advent of the CRM and exploding databases has allowed even the smallest organization to grow their data lists to extreme proportions. The downside of having more and more information can often result in focusing on the wrong action.

The first reaction by many managers is now that the team has the info, all they have to do is make some (or many) calls. However, separating what’s needed to advance the sales process and how to decipher the information is not so simple a process as making calls.

It can often be an excruciating exercise because there is little to help you turn data into information and knowledge. Hence, you are caught in the trap of the numbers game because the kind of sporadic wins you get when calling blind are a result of focusing on just the behavior: the number of calls. There is absolutely no question that this type of behavior focus leads to poor results and early burnout of sales staff.

Consistent “wins” are the result of having a strategy and making good decisions.

It’s not about numbers anymore; it’s about the ratios! Ratios are about thinking strategically, not numerically. By providing logical strategies for every step of the sales process you focus your team on the highest probabilities with a specific mission. This means you make better decisions and you naturally get better outcomes in less time with strategically focused sales behavior.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner – Well defined and specific strategies are needed.

Each phase of the sales process requires a well defined and specific strategy. Naturally qualifying takes a different tact than closing. Defining a strategy for each phase is imperative for sales people to understand what is expected and to have some gauge to measure performance by.

Whether it is qualifying a new lead upload or moving an opportunity through the sales stages, a defined and actionable list for each will set the road map for strategic methodologies that are easily understood and carried out.

• On a basic level, this can be a series of specific pre-formatted actions (calls, meetings etc) that are baked into the account qualification process
• Advanced CRM techniques are especially important in the pipeline phase where inclusion of management, team members and other departments may be crucial to success

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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