Imagine telling your sales team to make all their usual customer and prospect visits this year…but , with a massive twist.  Ask the Sales execs how they would command acceptance from customers to offer their time for these regular visits, if your Sales execs were not allowed to discuss your company’s products / services.  You may find that trying to answer will do their head in.

Then buy them all a copy of David Maister’s Trusted Advisor and CEB’s The Challenger Sale.  Instruction = read assiduously.  You should find that the open minded, progressive thinking members of your team should have an “ah-hah” moment.  And get the bit about challenging and advising first … Selling widgets and wares second.

As most mature , B2B markets and sectors head further and further toward commoditisation, centralisation, and the horrible price-centric race to the bottom, the ability the “get it” , rewire and reskill the sales team accordingly, and then fully mobilise will become the difference between better sales team return on investment and redundancy.

Next week we will look into “In-field targeting and planning visits frequencies accordingly”.

Want to learn more? Check out “How relevant is your sales team optimisation?“