Sell More With The Power Of Purpose

There can be little argument that sellers are faced with a bewildering range of challenges in today’s new sales and business environment, and many are beyond the scope of traditional sales training and coaching. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that sales skills are not important, they most certainly are. In fact equipping our salespeople with truly great, even world-class sales capabilities is an absolutely essential ingredient in the sales success formula. Having said that, it takes more than awesome sales skills and abilities to navigate the complexities of today’s hyper-competitive, low trust marketplace.

The unfortunate reality for millions of entrepreneurs, corporate salespeople, advisers, consultants, partners or anyone who finds themselves fulfilling any type of sales function, is that most are having a really tough time with sales and selling. And depending on whose data you follow, with only around 30%-50% of salespeople achieving quota, it seems clear that something is missing!

Just about every business finds themselves operating in a marketplace where numerous other companies are selling products and services that are just as good as theirs, employing salespeople that are just as skilled as their own. In fact with sellers turning over in as little as 18-months, some of their people may have been trained by you. Ouch!! What worked before simply doesn’t work any longer.

More than just about any other profession, salespeople feel the impact of today's disengaged, low trust world through longer sales cycles, inability to access to key stakeholders, lack of collaboration, and many other related issues. To thrive sellers need more than great sales skills. Purpose is the key to unlocking a higher level of sales and business performance and there has never been a more crucial time to connect your salespeople with their purpose.

In order to do more than just survive, but thrive we need to be much more than in the past, and that requires leaders to create an environment where every day, salespeople are able come to work and orient their work to their purpose. Just selling more, or hitting quota falls well short of delivering the kind of meaning and fulfilment necessary to achieve and be more.

By working to understand and activate the purpose of everyone in your sales organisation, you can also powerfully connect employees to your organisational purpose.

Every organisation has a purpose, even if it's not articulated. The same is true of every person. We each have a purpose. We each stand for something and have a contribution to make. Although this purpose is rarely articulated, it impacts every decision we make and how we interpret the world around us. 

Historically, measuring and managing the alignment of individual employee purpose with organisational purpose has been close to impossible. As a result purpose has always been treated as little more than a creative writing exercise mashed up with personal reflection. The really great news is that is no longer the case, the technology and tools are here and we can now create and connect people to purpose quickly and at scale. 

The workforce is demanding more fulfilling work, and we now know it is the key to sustainably successful cultures across every measure. When you invest in the discovery and activation of personal purpose in your sales organisation, you fundamentally change the way people show up in every interaction, inside and outside of your organisation.

The highest performing, hugely successful salespeople and sales organisations around the world are purpose driven. They understand that selling isn't about them, and it isn't even about their products or services, as important as they are. It's about the customer and the outcomes they’re trying to achieve. By always working backwards from there, they create powerfully differentiated experiences and consistently achieve superior results.

They cultivate trusting relationships wherever they go by focusing exclusively on creating extreme value by constantly looking for ways they can serve and have a positive impact on peoples lives. Sales professionals and organisations that operate with these principles tend to be among the most successful individuals, teams, and organisations worldwide.

The really great news is there's nothing mystical or magical about this, everything you need to enjoy the same, or even greater success, as the worlds top sales performers is available to you, and that's exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming webinar. Click here to register and be part of the purpose movement in sales. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian J Lowe is the Founder and CEO of eccoh, a sales transformation, coaching and consulting organisation pioneering a movement to change the way the world experiences and thinks about sales. The selling environment has radically changed and yesterday’s attitudes, mindsets and cultures are no longer relevant. To succeed we need to be much more than in the past. Our mission is to harness the collective energies of every salesperson on the planet as a force for good in the world.