Arguably, the biggest challenge for sales leaders is developing the capability and effectiveness of their sales team. Or, to put it simply, getting the team to close more, more often.
Whilst leaders know it’s crucial to invest in their team members’ development to boost results, confidence, and job satisfaction, they often come up short of understanding where to focus time and resources and how to provide the ‘right’ training.
The sales industry as a whole has sought to solve this by developing sales ‘frameworks’ or ‘methodologies’. An online search will help you find any number (you can start with 12 here). They have great names: SPIN, N.E.A.T.; SNAP, Challenger; MEDDIC; and SPICED. Arguably, the best thing that sales methodologies do is sell themselves; however, they are designed to deliver two elements:
1. A framework for tracking and measuring sales
This allows individuals and teams to measure and assess the sales pipeline, opportunities, and forecasting. Despite being a begrudged activity for every salesperson, measurement is critical. As the saying goes, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it’. As a baseline to measure, any framework can help and provide guidance and rigour on how to measure.
2. A methodology to help upskill the individuals and teams
The thinking here is that by following a set of ‘tested’ steps and activities, you help the sales team improve their skills and interactions throughout the sales process. To deliver outcomes on the skills, these methodologies are typically quite prescriptive, leaving little variance for unique circumstances. This one-size-fits-all approach means in terms of skills development, the results are questionable.
So why don’t they work?
They do, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
A five year study by Florida State University has proven that no single sales methodology is effective all the time; rather, learning to be agile and adapt to each individual situation is the key to winning more deals.
To explain it another way, developing your team’s capabilities as a single sales methodology is equivalent t0 restricting their potential to succeed in client interactions.
Learning to sell = Learning to cook
The easiest way to explain why this methodology-focused development approach is flawed is by relating the art of sales to cooking.
A Sales Methodology is very similar to a recipe. It describes a number of inputs, a number of process steps, and an outcome. As anyone who has cooked will know, even if the inputs are the same, the outcomes of following a recipe are often highly variable. It’s what has made MasterChef so addictive season after season.
If you think about some of the terms that go into a recipe:
- 3 Lemons (no mention about whether they are small, medium, large ... nor how juicy they are)
- Sauté until Brown (over what heat? In what type of pan? Until how brown?)
- Simmer (what exactly is a simmer ... how much bubbling?)
- Season with Salt & Pepper (and season to 'taste' couldn’t be more subjective)
It is up to the chef to take these instructions, find the available ingredients and equipment, and adapt the recipe to create something. And to go from serviceable to good to great is a clear measure of the capability, experience and skill of the person cooking. Skill doesn’t just happen by reading the recipe and putting together the ingredients, it develops with experience and practice.
When we apply this to sales capabilities, the experience and practice that most salespeople rely on is in real-world customer sales opportunities. Using the same prescribed methodology without the ability to adapt to unique customer circumstances, the results are going to be highly variable.
Teaching a single sales methodology won’t improve skills. Sales skills development is about understanding and practising the fundamentals. This isn't just learning acronyms and watching videos, this is identifying each step of the process down to the minutiae, understanding where it fits in the sales process, how it contributes to the end goal and most importantly, practicing, honing and embedding these skills with experiential practice.
What other options are there?
So, how do you develop your skills? Let’s think about professional chefs (because, in reality, professionals are what we are dealing with when we talk about salespeople, or at least should be):
Start with the basics.
Chefs will go to culinary school and spend weeks and months doing nothing but learning, practising and refining the most basic of skills. They will receive instruction on how to slice, hold a knife properly, prepare their pans, how much oil or butter to use, when the heat is just right, how long to leave and when to move, and when it is prepared just right.
Each of these are skills that everyone can do, but few can perfect; however, they will need to gain experience in before moving on to more advanced capabilities.
Understand the whole journey.
A recipe is really only part of successfully plating a meal. We’ll break it down with some examples relating to the sales process:
| Cooking | Sales |
|---|---|
| You start with sourcing the ingredients | You start by researching your prospect |
| You prep your station | You do analysis on your target prospect/business |
| Finally, you start cooking, and in most professional kitchens, you have multiple different elements coming together | You begin your sales conversations. As in kitchens, organisations have multiple stakeholders and teams involved in this process |
| Time to plate up. You might have 6 different meals on the counter for service. | Ready to close? In Enterprise sales, there are numerous decision makers and stakeholders involved |
Actually cook
Only when you have the skills and the understanding of how it all comes together (and not just as a series of written steps, actual real-world experience of each step) will you be handed the keys to run a kitchen.
All chefs use recipes, but experience and practice allow you to understand nuance and adjust for variables that make a meaningful difference in the outcome – and the sales process is no different.
Teaching a single sales methodology won’t improve skills. Sales skills development is about understanding and practising the fundamentals. This isn’t just learning acronyms and watching videos, this is identifying each step of the process down to the minutiae, understanding where it fits in the sales process, how it contributes to the end goal and most importantly, practicing, honing and embedding these skills with experiential practice.
This is the core purpose of EnableIQ – the learning modules focus on situational selling and the core skills required at each step of the sales process. Breaking these skills down into short, easy-to-digest learning units accompanied by a quiz, practice exercise, and workbook activity means learnings are embedded and applied in a role-specific way.
Reach out to find out how this can make a difference to your sales team, or take the express capability assessment so you can begin to understand where your development needs lie.
