How have you breasted the tape this quarter end?

Hopefully, your deal value and your customer’s trust did not get sacrificed at the altar of Time. It is shocking how many salespeople still use the primitive tactic of quarter end pressure and discounting to secure deals. If only, over the course of a customer conversation, they had the discipline to get the customer to calculate value in their business terms. That value would have driven enough deal momentum to avoid the last-minute quarter end rush. What amazes me are the hundreds of salespeople and managers I get to meet every month, who have still not been taught how to calculate business value in the customer’s financial terms.

How is your Organization inoculating itself against the quarter end hockey stick? 

#businessvalue #ROI #customervalue #TCO #businessacumen #Financialacumen #Executiveconversations #salesdiscipline

Some sales tenets to live by – 

1. In sales, start anywhere go everywhere. 
2. An ideal sales call is one step forward in the customer’s buying cycle and going one level above in the hierarchy.
3. Measure yourself not through your actions, but through your customer’s reactions, actions and acknowledgements.

What other sales tenets do you live by?

#WomeninSales #Salestenets #Salesleadership

Three shots that every sales-person should have in their sales catapult – 

1. Basket of insights
2. Executive presence in customer conversations
3. Leveraging contrast to drive differentiation.

Think about your next customer meeting coming up next week. Is your basket of shots ready to help your customer hit their target?

#Milliondollarmindset #differentiation

As you turn the dial on your achievement, is your customer feeling the heat?

Customer centricity is not about the bonhomie and the transaction, it is your ability to be by the side of your customer to guide and empower them on their journey towards their greatness.

When was the last time your customer publicly acknowledged you for your #customercentricity?

#salesskills 

It is QBU (Quarterly Business Update) time for most organizations. As you think of your commentaries and stories, think about how your engagement can stand differentiated in the eyes of your leaders.
Allow me to suggest the Three Sights framework – Hindsights, Insights and Foresight’s.

Hindsight’s tell you what you have learnt and how you can change.
Insights focus on the 20/80 activities – 20% of activities that drive 80% results.
Foresights refers to future potential risks that you could mitigate now.

How can this new format help you present a better business update to your managers and leaders?

#sales #salesteams #storytelling

What can Field Sales learn from Inside Sales?
Perhaps the answer is hidden in plain sight. If we parse FIELD, we get Focus, Insights, Engagement, Leverage and Differentiation. The question sales leaders need to be asking now is –

1. How are your sellers focusing and maximizing customer face time?
2. How are your sellers leading with a bouquet of insights that reframes your customer’s thinking?
3. What proportion of your customer engagement today is with decision makers?
4. How are your sellers leveraging significant business value to drive deal momentum?
5. How are your customer’s decision makers articulating how your sellers and your Organization is differentiated?

The lines between field sales and inside sales are blurring.

How are you driving clarity as a sales leader?

#fieldsales #insidesales #digitalsales #sales #salesleaders #salescoaching #salesperformance #salesskills #customerconversations #insights

Red Blood Corpuscles or RBCs are cells that transmit oxygen throughout the body.

So, what should be the RBCs for your organization?
It is all about Resetting, Badging and Coaching. 

Resetting is about reinventing your strategies, re-evaluating your ecosystem and rehiring people for the new abnormal. Badging is about assessing capabilities both from a skill and behavioural perspective. Coaching is about building a culture that transforms your talent.

As a Leader, what is your RBCCount today?

#Resilience #newnormal #reset #leadershipquotient

With the world opening up gradually, sales professionals have a wonderful opportunity to thrive in the new normal.

Thriving is about resonating with the new set of priorities for your customer, differentiating your unique ability to create value and substantiating the business value that you could drive. The moot point is whether sales professionals can resonate, differentiate and substantiate with a sense of urgency and a bias for action.

As customers reset, revive and reinvent themselves, are you part of their solution?

#salesperformance #salesskills #customervalue #innovation

Now is the season to assess risks to your business. Ask each one of your leaders, “What are the top 10 risks facing our business today?”

Collate all the responses, remove duplicates and what is left is what you need to mitigate.

There is a saying “A person who defends everything, defends nothing”. Therefore, as a leader it is your responsibility to focus your team. Start plotting all the risks across the Three Circles – Circle of Distraction, Circle of Influence and Circle of Control. While you do this exercise along with your team, observe those leaders who are pushing everything into the circle of distraction. These are the leaders who are not taking accountability for solving your businesses’ current situation. The risks that are under the circle of influence are the ones that you need to solve as team and those under the circle of control are those where you show ownership and accountability to mitigation.

What steps are you taking now to mitigate your business risks everyday?

#RiskMitigation #Growthmindset #Leadershipidentification #ChoosingYourFocus #prioritization

As customers reevaluate their priorities and refocus their strategies, it is important that sales professionals requalify their opportunities, reframe the customer’s focus areas and reiterate their differentiated value proposition.

Is your sales organization leveraging these 5 R’s to thrive in a time of crisis?

#salesleaders #salesreframes #customer #newnormal #salessuccess #covid19 #realign #valueproposition #salesperformance #accelerators

I asked the Chairman “What is your key takeaway from the day we spent today?

He said, I think it is VSARA. In fact, I remember it as Virtual SARA”.

What the Chairman was referring to was the workshop we had on developing their Vision, their Strategies, their LT Alignment, their Risks and their Actions to mitigate risks. How are you connecting your Vision, Strategies, Alignment, Risks and Actions for the future?

#leadershipgrowth #salesgrowth #growthmindset #rethinkRisk #VSARA