Ryan Hall

Sales culture is often overlooked. The culture that binds a sales team together and the sales team to the business is crucial. Sales needs to be promoted as a positive function, despite it often not being. It’s often said sales is everyone’s problem. But in reality sales is everyone’s opportunity. By bringing sales into the wider business culture and the wider business into the world of sales, the culture in the sales team alone is improved. Making sales team feel more positive and connected to the rest of the team. Creating better transparency in the sales team makes that team work better and deliver stronger results with more positive accountability - and this also positively impacts the trust the wider business has for sales.

Simply put. Don’t. It’s 2024. No one wants to be cold called for anything. Yesterdays door-to-door double glazing sales person is todays door-to-door solar panel sales person. Yes you might get a sale, but it will be distressed. The approach is also hard to scale and doesn’t work with today’s buyers buying needs which are built on; reputation, trust and authority. And in today’s world of privacy and ‘on-my-terms-communication’ cold calling has no place for a sophisticated sales approach.

Every story, especially in sales needs a start, middle and end. In the case of a sales pitch; setting up the problem, showing how much its solved, proving how you have solved it in the past and how you’d do it again. Sounds obvious but if you then think about the story points you need in each and apply a ‘bell curve’ model that maps the attention span of your audience that helps you structure the presentation and ensure that your presentation is weighted correctly by the amount of time you should spend on each section to hit home you’re message.

Context is everything is sales. Connect of; you versus the completion, the buyers business health, their market pressures, the individual buyers pressure in work and even out of work. Without context and humility, you will never be a great closer.

Never disrespect the competition. Why do you need to be negative? Positivity breeds success and constructive breakdowns of your product or service is a far better way to build a relationship with you buyer. By all means point out the difference, maybe even fall on your sword and give the competition a little ‘win’ by highlighting something they are better at than you - why? - it shows humility. And buyers will buy into that as honesty and set you apart from just the features set.

It’s often easy to get too focussed on the competition and forget about your product/service and its value. But moreover, focussed on the collection too much might mean you neglect the most important part of selling - the customer needs. This about this when closing because you product/service might have a superior fit for the buyers needs. So when it comets to closing you should always bring it back to their needs and how you solve them.