Should your salespeople perform like professional athletes?

Consider this Opportunity Analysis graph

Situationally, if you were ‘red’ would you pursue this opportunity? What of ‘blue’? Read on….

This simple and possibly overused analogy contains more than an element or two of truth!  Consider for a moment, All Blacks, 49ers or Manchester United athletes.  They dedicate days, weeks, months and even years perfecting their knowledge and skill to compete.  The driving ambition is to embed every aspect of the game plan into their DNA so that their body and mind executes flawlessly.

In a similar way, peak performing sales people invest in their knowledge, skill and time in order to win.  In fact, opportunities qualified as ‘unable to win’ are quickly discarded.  In addition, peak performers automatically disregard the temptation to respond, unless they have influenced the request for proposal requirements.

Once athletes and for that matter, peak performing sales people are committed they home in on the game plan.  For sales people this involves ensuring clarity in establishing the reason the customer needs to act now.  This necessitates unpacking and ratifying the foundation building blocks around the relationship ecosystem, decision criteria and solution and confirming the two-way collaboration levers that make up trust and credibility are sound.  

No athlete enters the game without a competitive strategy to attack, defend, flank, or fragment the competitor(s).  So too, peak performers build an intimate understanding of the competitor from the customer’s perspective.

Unfortunately, all too often we have found sales people have vague understanding of client needs, budgets, timing, priority, competitor risk etc., and are overly optimistic and positive about every customer’s project.  They are unable to articulate the ‘burning platform’ and/or the forecasted spend, leaving value levers and ‘solution fit’ as positive but misaligned to the benefits of identifying decision criteria.  More often than not, too much emphasis is placed on over-estimated political leverage, usually that of a single contact.

At the outset you were asked to consider the Opportunity Analysis graph. When using a tool like the 4 x 5, or any other qualification methodology the decision is easier to actuate and can prove invaluable in opportunity assessment, qualification and activity planning.  

If you are interested a free version of the 4 x 5 tool register here to download.