The yin and yang of sales

The yin and yang of sales

Some people may be able to ‘sell ice to Eskimos’ and others may be ‘born salespeople’, but I tend to disagree with the notion that great sales people are only born and cannot be made.

I believe that anybody who is passionate and believes in their product will inspire others to buy.

Furthermore, a natural ability to build relationships, through an empathic ability to identify people’s needs and wants (even when they cannot voice them!) will also close many a deal.

So all of these traits will bode well for a sales person’s potential to generate revenue.

However, I have also worked with many competent sales people who achieve solid results largely through hard work and discipline. These people may not necessarily be ‘naturals’ when it comes to relationship building and management, but their persistent dedication often gets them across the line.

I always hesitate to generalise, however perhaps we can conclude that there are at least two distinct ‘types’ of high achieving sales people. Leaving each ‘type’ with a variety of skills that can still be developed. Indeed, to be a truly great sales person, I believe people need to use tools from a variety of sources, with a range of leaders and mentors.

Sometimes this means training yourself (or being trained!) to go against a natural inclination. Good sales people who are strong on relationships can be coached in disciplined processes. And good sales people who rely on top notch systems can have their people skills developed, by good managers and training.

Having a mix of these natural skills sets in your sales team can only help. Companies that develop a range of attributes in their team may just elevate their sales from good to great.

What do you think makes for a great sales person?

Importance of Ongoing Management and Staff Training

When you talk about the people in an organization, it refers to everyone at every level from the Chief Executive Officer to the mail room worker. It is the people who accomplish the tasks necessary to fulfil the mission of the organization. Unfortunately, it is also the people who can become the barriers to progress unless they buy into the mission of the organization and understand their roles in achieving success.

But just as important is the fact people must be trained to do their jobs the right way and with an understanding of how their job fits into the overall scheme of things. Dysfunctional organisations are often unable to build quality business environments because they have one basic and critical flaw: lack of people unity due to lack of training.

This is true for the top, middle and line managers and for the staff doing the day to day customer work. When you read about the principles of project management, you discover that one of the first principles that must be addressed is the matter of governance and control. But how do you teach these important principles?

It all comes down to leadership training. The CEO must learn to lead the entire organization and be prepared to handle conflict along the way. The middle managers must be prepared to supervise the front line staff in a way that supports the mission of the organisation. The staff that have the most contact with customers need to understand how their jobs support the organization and how their treatment of customers is one of the most important factors determining overall profitability.

Unifying Themes

You see people draw organisational charts that show who answers to who by position within different functional areas. It begins with the CEO and the arrows normally flow downward through the levels. Instead of drawing a traditional organisational flow chart, you can draw a training flow chart. On this chart, the mission of the company would be at the top, and the arrows would flow through the various levels such as management training, sales team training, customer service training, and business training.

On the training flow chart though, the arrows would flow in a circle from top to bottom and back up to the top again in a circle. Training people to become business leaders within the organisation is an ongoing process which relies on constant feedback. This constant feedback takes the form of effective communication within the organization, communication between the organization and its customers, and a flow of training information that keeps people attuned to the organizational mission and how their jobs fit within the big picture.

Never Working Alone

One of the most important principles the people within a company must learn is that they are never working alone even if they work alone. This may sound odd at first, but an organization has to operate as a whole. Even the customer service representative working alone in an office answering customer complaints must always operate with a business mindset that he or she must do the job in a particular manner in order to help the entire company to succeed.

Management and staff training is an important and critical function if a company hopes to become and remain profitable. Without proper training and leadership development, people tend to create mini-kingdoms within the workplace and then rule to their own advantage which may or may not be to the advantage of the business. Teaching people to be leaders within their own company roles is how you can build a strong and well developed organisation that is able to flourish through all economic times.