Understanding the Sales Force

We established 21 Core Competencies for Selling about a decade ago.  They’re still important but they might be evolving.  A salesperson’s ability to use the internet may now be just as important as his ability to prospect, develop a relationship, qualify and close business. 

There’s a moral to this story, a lesson learned right in my own back yard.  If the OMG Sales Candidate Assessment says, “Not Recommended”, do not, under any circumstances, hire the candidate. 

You probably know Jeffrey Gitomer, author of the Little Red Book of Selling and a syndicated columnist in many business journals. In this week’s column, Gitomer presented five internal senses required for having a sense of selling.

He says that “you must interpret the customer’s words, questions, tone, mood and motives in order to determine both where your opportunity is, and when that opportunity has surfaced.”Generally good advice.  But what would happen if we took it one step further?

Up until now, whenever I’ve mentioned Seth Godin, it’s been to take him to task on the subject of the “Death of Selling”. Today, Seth made lots of sense with his post on Getting Referrals.  I’ve also written a post on getting referrals.

You want your existing salespeople to haunt their prospects when those prospects go into hiding.  That will prevent them from becoming sales ghosts that come around to haunt you!

You can’t let stuff like that bother you.  Can you imagine what would happen if all of the professional managers and coaches in sports reacted to the name calling and negativity they get from their fans and the media?  They’d be crushed! Just apologize if you offend someone, even if it wasn’t intentional, and move on.  Don’t get upset if they call you names.

Our four-year old son asked me to play baseball with him today, a beautiful, calm, but chilly fall day.  He couldn’t find the oversized whiffle ball that I used to pitch to him all summer so we used a significantly smaller, regulation size rubber ball.  I told him it might take a little while to get used to the smaller ball and he would have to watch it very closely.