How to Practice Your Sales Profession?

In my last article, “Are you a Sales Professional?? Or just a salesperson?” I explored what defines a professional by examining medical doctors and lawyers and why it is said that they “practice” their professions.? I identified four principles common to doctors and lawyers that I then applied to technology sales professionals:

1.????? Ongoing Learning and Adaptation

2.????? Application of Knowledge

3.????? Ethical and Professional Judgment

4.????? Complexity and Uncertainty

Having identified these principles in my last article, this article will focus on practicing our sales profession. Unlike medicine and law, there are no standardized education tracks, only very few undergraduate degrees available, no advanced degrees, no standardized testing, and no state licensing requirements to become a sales professional.? There is no clear roadmap to becoming a sales professional, which is likely why so few exist.?

Some will argue that being a top-performing salesperson means being a sales professional. This is probably true if they are perennially and consistently top performers. Otherwise, many salespeople get lucky occasionally and are not otherwise true sales professionals based on the four principles outlined above.? As managers, how many times have you hired a salesperson based on their past success only to find that they are mediocre at best?? As a salesperson, have you been a top performer occasionally but not consistently?? Do you feel like you have reached a plateau and are no longer getting better?

Let’s return to the topic of practicing our sales profession.? And let’s start with the definition of “practice.”? A simple Google search for the “definition of practice” tells us:

These definitions are insightful for our purposes.? We see right away that “practice” is both a noun and a verb.? I used “practice” as a verb in this article's title, but the definitions of practice as a noun are relevant. ??To practice our sales profession, we need to do.? We need to perform the activity and exercise the skill of sales (first verb definition).? We must carry out and perform our sales activity habitually and regularly (second verb definition).? In doing so, we will develop our sales practice whereby we actually apply ideas, beliefs, and methods related to sales (first noun definition).? And, if we practice repeatedly and regularly, our practice will become customary, habitual, and expected (second noun definition).

Okay, so how do we do this? More specifically, how do we do this in relation to the four principles that define a profession?? Let’s break it down.? Ongoing learning and adaptation?? Application of knowledge?? Ethical and professional judgment?? Complexity and uncertainty?? In each case, you can learn from your own experiences and others’ experiences.

To learn from your own experiences requires you to focus on learning from your own experiences.? This sounds obvious, but very few are focused on it.? How often do you say or hear, “It’s just a numbers game,” to reinforce doing the same thing the same way?? Learning from your own experiences requires you to stop and analyze them – good and bad, successful and unsuccessful, productive and unproductive.? What was different or unique about this situation that led to this outcome?? How can I replicate the good outcomes and avoid the bad ones?? What did I do well?? What didn’t I do well that I could have done better?? What didn’t I do that I should have done?? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself (or a good sales coach asks you) after each sales call or prospecting or outreach campaign.? Then, you need to take time to prepare for each sales call or outbound campaign to plan for how to apply what you have learned.?

How do you know if your analysis and conclusions are sound?? This is where sharing your experiences with others and learning from others’ experiences is helpful.? Two avenues are available to learn from others – internal or external to your organization.? Internally, suppose you have a consistent top performer on your team that exhibits the qualities of a sales professional. In that case, you can try to develop a one-on-one relationship to advance your learning agenda.? However, that person may not exist in your organization, or they may not be interested in helping you.

Ideally, your manager is a good team coach focused on elevating the sales game for every salesperson.? A good coach starts with fostering the sense of a team.? Even though most salespeople have their own accounts, their own territories, their own prospects, and their own quotas, a good coach will show that there is value in team collaboration and working together to help each individual on the team to hit their individual goals, which will lead to hitting the team goals.? How does a good team coach do this?? By focusing sales team meetings on opportunities for everyone to learn by sharing different and relevant experiences.? A good team coach compounds and multiplies the individual learning experiences by opening them up for the rest of the team to learn from.?

What about the other avenue to learn from others – external to your organization?? This will be the topic of my next article…? stay tuned.