100 Skills of the Successful Sales Professional

Your Guidebook to Establishing & Elevating Your Sales Career

Alex Dripchak

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637420638
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Ventes

100 Skills of the Successful Sales Professional prioritizes action-orientation and puts antiquated outlines out to pasture. The book is designed to not only curate the best expert teachings, but it also consolidates these teachings to maximize the value extracted from every page.

If you're conscientious about making the biggest impact in your professional career by taking action to minimize the long learning (and earning) curve, then this is the playbook for you.

CHAPTER 1

100 to 91: Ensuring They Don’t Pull the Proverbial “Trigger”

Chapters are General Themes to Indicate Shifting a Prospect’s Mindset and not all skills will fall under each general theme.

100. Projects an Attractive Appearance (3 minutes)

Through the eyes of my pen, I can see almost a universal eye roll. “How is that a skill?” Bear with me. In a world where all potential buyers are suspect of sales people from their conjured images of used car salesmen, telemarketers, spam messages from overseas, and so on, you’re lumped in. I don’t care if you’re the top salesperson at SalesForce, Oracle, Microsoft, and so forth—you’re in there. Actually you may be Suspect #1. Given your success they will treat you like a hypnotist—I’m not going to fall for her magic spell! No magic wand (or for Get Out fans—teacup) can lure me in!

Why all this babble about skepticism? It starts within that five seconds they walk from the door to the waiting room to greet you:

Does this person look trustworthy? Do they look like me? Are they interested in our business or making another sale?

Lauded psychologist Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science & Practice talks extensively about how those who are attractive make 12 percent to 14 percent more than their counterparts. While there isn’t a ton you can do to change your face, skin, or height, there are important touches you can make to connect.

For men I’d say this is a nice jacket, jeans or slacks, a proper dress shoe (moderate shine), subtle smile, and firm handshake. More reader headshakes, I can feel it. You’re thinking—suits! I want to show them I take them seriously and look my absolute best! Truth is, suits, unless they’re becoming of the environment you’re entering (banking, securities, government), are a hindrance. Something we are comfortable with. We as salespeople correlate suits to success.

Going to a meeting? Put on the suit. Going to a conference? Put on the suit! We somehow think we go from Clark Kent to Superman when going into our little telephone booth (bathrooms or bedrooms) and donning the outdated.

Daniel Pink in his To Sell Is Human goes into detail about the negativity people associate with salespeople being draped in suits, smiles, and shiny shoes.

In a way suits are a conformity. Most sales personnel go suit and tie and what happens? Everyone looks the same. Let me share a story with you and valuable lesson I learned from an….outspoken… CFO.

I was going to meet a new CFO stepping into a Top 10 disruptive company. I tried hard to decipher his style premeeting. His pictures online are in suit and tie. He’s an executive, but it’s a disruptive company. My final nail in the coffin? Well, this is in Manhattan—NYC is fancy. I’ll go suit and drop the tie. Perfect middle ground right? Wrong.

While in the waiting room I realized just how off I was wearing a custom shirt and cufflinks, pocket square, and all. To dress it down, I unbuttoned my top button and lost the pocket square. In walks the CFO and his first words?

“We don’t wear suits here in Start-Up World.”

I might have well just walked out right then and there because after that it was all skepticism, all mindless tests focused on getting me to stumble rather than explore a potential partnership together.

Action Item: If it’s a first meeting, ask about attire in advance. It may sound elementary but it’s dually recognized and appreciated.

99. Tracks Client Reference Win Percent (2 minutes)

Ok, so now we made a big shift here from #100 being about mirroring/matching/connecting with your clients initially to how you effectively manage client relationships to win future business.

This point, originally brought to my attention by Lee Salz in his Sales Differentiation masterpiece, speaks to the very analytical elements sales personnel must master. In a world where it’s increasingly easy to mute, block, disregard, or otherwise eliminate unwanted noise, you need to deliver value quickly. We have shifted from quantity to quality in our outreaches. You can’t wear people down quite as much these days and that calls out the need to analyze what works. Let’s take references as an example. Utilizing client references usually comes at the end stages of a deal or the closing stages of an RFP (Request for Proposal).

We list three references and ask to see which they want to speak to. While you could win or lose for a variety of reasons, references are a big portion. If you’re winning at a tremendous rate and find out it’s because they spoke to Jackie @ABC Client, well then Jackie is no longer a client, she’s an advocate. A darn good one at that. Not only will Jackie be your go-to person next time, she should also see an uptick in event invitations, freebies, and anything else to ensure she receives the attention she deserves.

In one step you not only figured out your best “Down the Funnel Advancement” strategy, but also figured out your highest retention priorities.

Action Item: Go through your last five deals: Who did you list as references? Who did they speak to? What percent of the time did you win with X contact versus your average or company average conversion rate?

98. Leverages Sales Tools (2 minutes)

Living in a modern, computer-focused, tech-enabled world, it’s hard to believe sales tools would rank so low. The reason? It’s often outside your hands to make these types of purchasing decisions. Good news? There is a process to buying software or subscriptions and nearly all vendors recognize that. So sign up for the demo!

As opposed to spending 300 words on why they are important, I’ll call out my five most essential sales tools to try. I recommend Stu Heinecke’s book How to Get a Meeting with Anyone for a more complete listing.

Bombora: Intent tracking platform that gives you the ability to see which topics are trending weekly at your prospects.

Discover.Org (now combined with Zoom Info): The mecca for contact information and intelligence on what projects prospects are looking into for those companies partaking in Qualtrics surveys.

Google Alerts (and RSS Feeds): Free! Great way to get the latest news articles involving your selected prospects as opposed to constantly (and sporadically) looking yourself.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The Digital Resume provider brings identification tools (who’s following your company) in addition to a communications platform (Inmail).

American Cities Business Journals: Not one I’m leveraging today but the same idea applies as the INC 5000 or other lists; what awards and news articles are surrounding your prospects?

Action Item: Sign up for Bombora’s free trial and Take the luck out of timing! This tool is beneficial for what to say and when to say it. For those managing big territories with deep toolsets, this is a must-have solution and the trial is very helpful in setting up your prospecting outreach.

Follow 10 companies on Google alerts! Be diligent about the exact wording you choose to follow—too generic and there will be tons of results; too specific and you may miss important articles. Piece of advice: For law firms and others written up on advising their clients, manage how often you’re getting updates or perhaps choose other companies to follow and lighten your e-mail overload.

97. Monitors Internal Position Constantly (2 minutes)

Some of you are thinking, what the hell is he talking about? Good, I’ve captured your attention. As author Mike Weinberg says, “sales is a verb” and as such it’s constantly changing. What works to what companies and what types of executives—-it’s all dynamic.

Considering such, we need to change as well. What may have been an active pursuit maybe needs to be moved after your key contact left and put back at the top of the funnel. Perhaps they had a negative experience with another line of business at your company and now are less of the excited internal advocates they used to be so you move back on the Miller Heiman emotion continuum.

If you constantly evaluate where you stand, you will be more in tune with what your clients are thinking, less ready to log into your CRM, and do the “three-month push” of your close date. If you’re thinking that doesn’t apply and believe your slow-to-sign deal hasn’t had changes, you’re wrong. Your job is to check with your internal team and cross line of business resources, coaches, and so on to see what may have developed/digressed and how you can handle it.

This not only matters for the deal itself but matters for how you handle your pipeline and, better yet, your territory. If things are retreating back to Identify or Active Pursuit from your Best Few or Committed stages, then you need reinforcements. Adopt the visual from the movie The Patriot.

One of the greatest scenes comes from when the Colonials retreat. The Redcoats follow them over the hill expecting to crush them but are instead crushed by the reinforcements the Colonials fell back to. Think of this as an analogy to your struggle as a sales rep: The Redcoats are your Quota; the retreating Colonials, your active, struggling deals; and finally the reinforcements your Pursuits and Identified Opportunities. If you’re not advancing ahead, it’s time to send in even more reinforcements than you would normally. This not only gives you more irons in the fire, but changes your emotional state from pressured to poised.

Action Item: Use the Miller Heiman emotion continuum on key deals to test your gut (show your work). Evaluate every one-fourth of your average deal cycle. This means if your average deal cycle is eight months, you should have a check-in every two months to monitor its progress. Recognize that not all hours are created equal. An hour prepping a finalist meeting is vitally more important than an hour responding to an RFI. Focus and allocate time accordingly.

96. Communicates Efficiently (Count Down, Not Up) (1 minute)

Time is money. For CEOs, asking for 30 minutes is often asking someone to invest 4 to 5 figures with you. As such, you should be living by the less-is-more principle. Don’t waste any words—whether in e-mails, presentations, speeches, and so on. Think about how you can maximize your, and more importantly, their time.

Woodrow Wilson, when asked how long he needs to prepare a speech, famously remarked,

It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

Don’t think of time as something you fill, think of it as something you maximize by refining down. To not be a hypocrite, let’s intentionally leave the rest of this page blank and skip to the action item.

Action Item: I’m sure you have a strong one-minute pitch but do yourself a favor and write a three-minute pitch. Now whittle that down to 1 minute, 45 seconds, 30, 15, then 100 words, 25, 10, 1. Deploy as you see accordingly to match your prospect/client’s style.

Shift Selling’s Craig Elias says you should be able to deliver your value proposition or as Weinberg calls it your “Power Statement” in seven words or less. Can you?

95. Informs and Includes Internal Team (2 minutes)

Sure this one is a little low on the totem pole at number 95 but that’s because it’s incorporated into many other items. However, this is a book about reminders, tips, action items, and—more than anything—accountability/fastidiousness to strategic and tactical details. Therefore, it gets its own number.

More than anything this is important because it includes another brain to help you solve challenges. I don’t care if you’ve tried “everything”; you don’t know everything so chances are you may have missed something plausible. Even if you dotted every t and crossed every I, perhaps someone has the one word to revise your sentiment that will help. (Also perhaps you read something so quickly that your brain told you it was correct—like my prior sentence—and someone else will catch it for you.)

I find that including your internal team does two things remarkably well: It builds your personal brand and it lessens the resistance you’ll encounter from other team members. Since you probably know what I mean by building your brand (and if not, we have a section coming up on it), let me first address what I mean when I say it lessens resistance. In many consulting/brokerage environments, you have two groups of people: the consultants and then the account management/business development/sales personnel. Like most of the world (outside the 11 percent of people who have sales as their vocation) these consultants probably have a jaded view of what you do. Here’s the picture they paint: something along the lines of a smooth-talking, minimal-working, self-serving, not-so-intelligent guy (or gal) who sits over there. Sound familiar? People make shortcuts in their mind and since this is a prevailing stereotype, it’s one that even some fairly close colleagues may think.

When you include your team in your pursuits, strategies, psychoanalysis of the buyer, and preparation for every hypothetical situation, they begin to foster a new appreciation of your skills and recognize your value. Once you have obtained a title of “valuable,” watch how much more they are willing to do and learn from you.

Given the perception that salespeople are often separat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Description
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About Commence
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 100 to 91: Ensuring They Don’t Pull the Proverbial “Trigger”
• Chapter 2 90 to 81: Getting Them to Lower the Gun
• Chapter 3 80 to 71: Establishing a Basis
• Chapter 4 70 to 61: Building a Relationship
• Chapter 5 60 to 51: Becoming an Ally
• Chapter 6 50 to 41: Developing a Potential Partnership Together
• Chapter 7 40 to 31: Becoming Their Preferred Choice
• Chapter 8 30 to 21: Winning Their Business
• Chapter 9 20 to 11: Standing Out as a Consistent, Top Performer
• Chapter 10 10 to 1: Being the Trusted Advisor
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• About the Author
• Index
• Backcover