Professional sales/client engagement people understand that part of their role is to assist their prospects. You have to understand that if prospects were to change from their existing paradigm, they would achieve even better outcomes.
To be able to do this, you must be comfortable with others being uncomfortable.
Truly effective sales/client engagement people know how to create tension in a conversational way. To do this, the person in front of you must realise that doing what you have always done will NOT get you the results you need to go forward.
There is constant change around us. This includes the market, the way the competitors are engaging with the market, the supply/demand equation, the buyer demographics, the buyers risk appetite and so on.
So, if you want to be a truly effective sales/client engagement person, there are three areas to you should understand:
Having success with this approach is whether or not you need to be liked as a salesperson. This is not about whether you can get people to like you. This is all about whether you NEED people to like you. They are two completely different things and NEEDING people to like you is a huge barrier to grow.
Consider that 79% of the top 10% of all salespeople DO NOT need to be liked, while only 8% of the bottom 10% have this as a strength.
Having success with this approach is whether or not you can stay in the moment. For example, the opposite of being able to stay in the moment is when you talk to yourself, worry or you get too excited before closing a deal.
66% of the top 10% of all salespeople are able to stay in the moment, while only 10% of the bottom 10% have this as a strength.
Having success with this approach depends on whether or not you understand and agree with a prospects buying process.
68% of the top 10% of all salespeople have a supportive buying process and therefore, don't understand why the prospect needs to comparison shop, look for a better price or think it over. By contrast, only 2% of the bottom 10% of all salespeople have a supportive buying process as a strength.
When we take the average of these three elements of Sales DNA, 71% of the top salespeople have these strengths and only 2.5% of the worst salespeople have these strengths. These three are huge differentiation between great and average!
Top salespeople are twenty-eight times more likely to disrupt the current paradigm and get a current outcome for all involved.
Those elements of Sales DNA are just three out of a total of twenty-one Sales Competencies that are measured by our Partner Objective Management Group. You can also grade your sales team here.