All Guts, No Glory
Anoop Mitra
Salesforce Certified Functional Solution Consultant | Agile Project Manager | Delivery Manager
Everyone is a salesman in reality. You sell your skills and talent to a potential employer when you interview for a job, you showcase your ability to strike a good deal when you successfully earn a discount on a product you purchase and you even successfully sell your good looks, charms for getting a evening date :)
For this discussion though let us talk about the salesman who sells solutions, services and products to you. A lot of salesmen i have come across talk a lot about pipelines, potentials, possibilities and what they "can" achieve. They talk about 3X pipelines to achieve their targets and confidently believe that it's all about tons of potentials that can lead to their goals.
If that was the reality then we would be having all salesman achieving their numbers and all review meetings only talk about success and not of missed targets. I call this sales syndrome "All Guts No Glory".
My success in sales has come through a different approach. I ask myself and my team just 5 questions for every potential 1) Have i got a clear understanding of my customer expectation in terms of the product or solution i wish to sell 2) Do i have a clear understanding of his budget 3) What's the realistic timeline that the sale can be achieved 4) Can we look at this customer as a long term investment 5) What are the growth areas (cross selling) they have identified with the account . I ask my team to think hard and come with up "Realistic" names of such customers.
What you see then is not a pipeline but a few names, probe further and that few becomes little. Instead of focusing on bloating pipelines, setting unrealistic targets, manufactured potentials, concentrate on getting good customers who are interested in your company and it's services. Approach sales as fulfilling a need rather than fulfilling a number and you would suddenly see growth and success that really matter over a sustained period of time. This is not a story, but from my direct experience of selling and managing a team a sales folks.
There's no fun in having all Guts all the time, it's more fun having less guts but more glory. Agree?