The 5 Steps to Sales Excellence

Sales excellence is not about big sales. It isn't necessarily getting the most or finishing a month or two on top. It's a process, continued evolution and consistency in approach, process and performance.

1. Be a student. Realize that learning in sales and your career is ongoing. It begins with the training you partake in with a sales role - learning products, systems, processes and go-to-market strategies. It continues with the unwritten training: learning what those who are successful are doing, replicating it and improving on it in your own way. It entails studying the statistics that get you paid, that equate to success for the holy sales trinity - customer, company and you - and either perfecting process in those areas or creating one. You may master individual components of selling. You may have a great day, week, month or even year. You may do really well at a certain role or two. But sales excellence evolves over years and decades, takes perseverance and patience and will come down to how much you want and are willing to learn from each person or obstacle or challenge you come into contact with.
2. Be open-minded. When you think you know it all when it comes to sales, your journey is over. Even the least effective managers you'll have may drop a nugget of wisdom that helps you endure through career challenges. There are multiple ways to formulate and enhance your processes and there are numerous ways to meet people and learn about their business and scenario - yours may or may not work, but being open to new approaches and able to accept coaching and feedback and guidance will make you more effective - both as an internal collaborator and a seller. You never know when or where you'll pick up additional selling acumen. Never turn down a meeting or opportunity to collaborate with other leaders or sellers. Work to find new ways to approach obstacles. Take what you wish and assimilate it into your process. While you don't and won't ever completely jettison your process,  you will make countless additions and subtractions over the years; being open minded to sources and substance will make you more and more effective.
3. Continue looking for challenges. Be mindful of your goals. Many salespeople will fall into one of these two categories: (1) They come out of the gates strong, have a quick ascent and then steady descent; never again reaching that peak performance and (2) They take some time to ramp up, learn a ton and find a peak a little bit later but have more success in maintaining that level of performance. The latter is beneficial because of the realization of what it took to reach the peak, rather than having quick success and/or burning out, getting bored or folding to first signs of real adversity. Are you the top seller in your group? If not, learn from those around you and work with leadership to improve your process so you can head in that direction. If so, are you mastering each metric in your business? You may be really strong in certain areas of your portfolio yet have gaps in process leading to unsatisfactory results in some metrics. Challenge yourself by getting uncomfortable and forcing yourself to become a complete seller; the one trick pony who is great at one metric and has ridden that to top dollar results is not as valuable as the complete seller who contributes consistently to metrics across the board. With this approach, you will always have something to be striving to improve, and through that approach and process you will be a better seller of true solutions to your clients. It helps you gain credibility with customers and your company alike. It will also make you the more complete seller whether you want to make more money or you wish to get promoted. New challenges can exist within your role, in new roles that help you develop other skills and even by taking additional responsibilities or stretch roles assigned by leadership to grow your expertise and value.
4. Proactively work to better those around you. If you are effective in an area, share the best practice in a collaborative way. Offer to your boss your willingness to share these ideas. Reach out to a peer who is doing well in an area you'd like to better yourself, offering to share best practices in your strong area but requesting their thoughts on theirs. Don't wait or rely on someone to necessarily reach out to you and ask you everything you know - someone has to take that first step and if you wish to showcase your value and collaborate with peers and leaders, there are few better ways than offering to expound upon your own value. One person performing exceptionally well is good, yet multiple people benefitting from this knowledge and you benefitting from the knowledge of everywhere equates to everyone winning. It rarely takes food off your plate to help another seller become better, especially if they teach you a few things; even if they pass you up, the friendly competition can motivate you and more people will be aware of the value you bring to the team and organization.
5. Use all tools at your disposal to network and grow relationships. Stay top of mind. In the digital age, you can utilize social media to find people geographically and at different levels of companies like never before. You can share quality content, stay prominent in clients' news feeds so they can latch on to your message, but you can also set an initial dialogue and broker meetings like never before. Do not take this opportunity lightly. All of that said, no amount of social media replaces the face-to-face interaction and the personal touch. Selling is relationships. Even if you are selling over the phone, a trust and rapport must be built and these require mutual understanding of goals and situations. Research your client or potential client, find decision-makers, send them unique messages which will elicit response and just get you to the table so you can take it from there with your selling processes. Tools exist that can prospect and be part of setting meetings like never before; use them effectively to find new relationships, share information, learn about people and businesses and trends and effectively get in front of more potential people.

Sales excellence means excellent selling, not excellent sales. It isn't always the person with the most or biggest, but the people who have polish and tirelessly work to improve process.  Sales excellence comes from willingness to try new approaches, recognizing reasons for failures and evolving approaches to be complete sellers with multiple dimensions. It means partnerships, relationship-building and a never-ending quest to stay effective and relevant and sharp.

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Carson V. Heady has written a book entitled "Birth of a Salesman" and sequels "The Salesman Against the World" and "A Salesman Forever" which take the unique approach of serving as sales/leadership books inside of novels showing proven sales principles designed to birth you into the top producer you were born to be. If you would like to strengthen your sales skills, go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICRVMI2/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_yGXKtb0G

Heady posts for "Consult Carson" serving as the "Dear Abby" of sales and sales leadership. You may post any question that puzzles you regarding sales and sales leadership careers: interviewing, the sales process, advancing and achieving.

Question submissions can be made via LinkedIn to Carson V. Heady, this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carson-V-Heady/125078150858064?ref=hl , Twitter via @cvheady007 or e-mail at [email protected] or you may post an anonymous comment as a reply to my WordPress blog at the bottom of this page: https://carsonvheady.wordpress.com/the-home-of-birth-of-a-salesman-2010-published-by-world-audience-inc-and-the-salesman-against-the-world-2014/