Connie is a top salesperson at one of my client companies. Like most other stars, one thing that separates Connie from the pack is that she’ll never wing it. Whenever she’s in a particular selling situation, she does the same set of things that helped her win similar deals in the past.
When something stops working, she finds an alternative and sticks with it as long as it keeps working. You might say that Connie has a set of repeatable playbooks in her head. These playbooks have been developed and adapted through her four years of experience in front of customers.
Mark sells the same products as Connie. He is a career middle-of-the-packer, always near or at quota, but never hitting it out of the park. Mark just sort of makes it up for each deal as he goes along. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t. Mark believes he would be so much more successful if he just got more at-bats. The problem is he can’t swing the bat like Connie. So giving him more at bats won’t improve his batting average.
Connie and Mark’s boss thinks he has a solution. He is planning to roll out a new sales methodology at the next sales meeting, believing that this is the missing link to improving sales performance. Think again.
A methodology alone won't get Mark to hit a split-fingered fastball.
OLD RULE: If we implement a new sales methodology, every salesperson will become an "A" player.
NEW RULE: Any salesperson can improve performance by following sales playbooks that are proven to work in winning deals.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a sales methodology or process is essential, but in my experience, they usually don’t have the impact they could because salespeople don’t have a practical way to follow them. I'll talk about why sales methodologies alone are not enough in my next post.
