“Winning is EVERYTHING.” “NEVER discuss money.” “The customer’s ALWAYS right.”
You may think these are sales truths, but they aren’t. Surprised? Many of our ideas may surprise you, but they work!

A successful sales performance is the result of the right set of sales behaviors, and these behaviors are driven by the company’s sales compensation structure, sales management, and each salesperson’s beliefs and attitudes. Sales-driving attitudes and beliefs deal with:

• Self confidence
• The ability to positively deal with rejection
• Internal motivation
• Willingness to take risks
• Breaking comfort zones

At Summit Selling Systems, we believe that there is a definitive set of beliefs and attitudes that consistently drive sales success. Our selling program is built around helping sales management and individual sales people build and maintain these attitudes and beliefs. Interestingly, over the years we have found that sales people can change their beliefs when they change some of the behaviors that they have become so familiar and comfortable with.

While there are clearly a number of important factors that determine the ultimate success of a salesperson, having the right mix or portfolio of prospects is a critical starting point. Regardless of how well your salespeople do on their sales calls, if they aren’t in front of the “right” prospects, it could be to no avail.

Summit has a proven, systematic approach for helping sales managers construct an optimal prospect portfolio for each salesperson. The systematic approach consists of four key steps. While many companies may perform one or two of these steps and though they may seem intuitive, we have found that most companies fail to place the necessary rigor behind this process. It is important to complete all of them to ensure a strong prospect portfolio for each salesperson. The following is a brief overview of each of these steps:

• Research Prospect Universe

  Determining the types of companies that could be prospects (e.g., the business categories, acceptable geography, company size, etc.).

• Identifying the Prospects

  Once the prospect universe is profiled, identifying the specific companies that fit within the prospect universe. There needs to be the right mix of large, medium and small prospects. Without enough large prospects, you really limit your upside. Without any small prospects, it may take you too long to generate any results.

• Prioritizing Prospects

  First, determining the criteria that will be used to prioritize prospects and then prioritizing potential prospects based upon that criteria.

• Set Goals

  Establish a specific set of goals for each salesperson. These goals should be established based upon an understanding of each individual salesperson’s overall job goals (what they want out of their jobs, what they are looking for in terms of earning potential, etc.). Once the salesperson’s overall job goals are determined, specific goals should be established for the appropriate period of time (annual, quarterly, etc.), by business category, etc.

Too many salespeople simply fly by the seats of their pants, without a specific sales plan in place. While the most skilled salespeople might be able to operate that way effectively (and even if they are operating off of an intuitive model more than really “winging it”), the vast majority will be far more productive with a plan. Over the years, we at Summit have seen salespeople who initially may have had poor results employ the Summit “Contact Model” and see tremendous results. At Summit, we believe that “activity equals results,” and we have empirical data to prove it. At one company, a 10% improvement in Contact Model performance produced a 15% increase in sales. In other words, the process is clearly the means to the end…

The successful salesperson identifies their most viable prospects and then builds and follows a contact plan, whereby there is a systematic approach to contacting these prospects over time. Summit’s Contact Model has three intuitive components: Plan, Implement, and Track.

• Plan

  We can work with most sales managers and salespeople to build a model whereby they can determine the relationship between the number of contacts their salespeople make, the percentage of those contacts that result in new sales opportunities, and the ongoing conversion rate of those new business opportunities into sales. With this understanding in mind, individual salesperson contact goals can be established to drive the desired resulting sales levels. These contact goals should be established within company goals, as well as each individual salesperson’s background, capabilities and earning needs in mind. Once this is done, everyone can focus more on the right behaviors and activities than on the end result. With the right behaviors, the end result will follow. Focusing on the process instead of the result leads to much greater success!

• Implement

  Once contact goals have been established, it is the salesperson’s responsibility to meet these goals over time. Summit works with the sales manager and sales staff to ensure that there is a strong culture that underscores the importance of meeting contact goals in order to succeed.

• Track/Accountability

  Without a strong tracking and monitoring program in place to ensure that contact goals are being met, the Contact Model and contact goals lack “teeth.” Summit works with sales managers to create a customized tracking and communications program that keeps salespeople mindful of their overall contact goals and how they are progressing over time. We can work with your current legacy system, switch you over to salesforce.com, or help build a proprietary system for you.

People buy from people they trust. People trust people they like. At Summit we have found that building trust in a selling situation is much like building any relationship — whether that happens in a few moments… or a few months. We teach people how to build deep, strong relationships.

We have developed a “tool kit” that provides salespeople with an array of approaches to help them develop and maintain positive and productive relationships with their prospects and clients. These tools will enable your salespeople to:

• easily identify their prospect’s personality type — their mindset, what makes them tick
• shape their prospect interactions based on an understanding of their personality type
• communicate with prospects in the way that they are most comfortable being communicated with
• uncover and manage everyone’s expectations

By using these relationship “tools,” your salespeople will most effectively connect with their prospects. The approach is mainly about making the prospect comfortable enough to start trusting them and shaping all interactions to do just that. We teach people to become experts at this through classroom training, role playing, and 1-on-1 coaching.