Salespeople: 5 Skills You Need To Influence Your CEO (& Can Start To Master In Under 2 Hours)
5 Modern Skills For Highly Effective Sales Teams.
CEO: “Can we sell more? Close quicker?”
NOTE TO SELF: Sure, if only it was that easy… It’s not as if I woke up and thought “How can we sell less today?”
Being asked a(n obvious) question like this can be intimidating, even annoying. It can cause stress, even a knee jerk tendency to say yes.
Curiosity, connection, targets, pressure from the top, or fear might be behind the question. Perfectly valid.
Whilst we can’t control what others ask, we can reflect on how to respond to obvious questions like this. Especially if we have a tendency to say ‘yes’, fill the space with words, get nervous, unable to think clearly when put on the spot.
Introducing the modern response to obvious questions. Adapted from Seth Godin’s Modern Curriculum (highly recommended).
The basic foundation is evidence-centred, not (sales)person-centred. In service of learning to handle tough questions and how to lead as well as follow, the skills are practical tools anyone can learn and use on their deals, especially communicating with internal stakeholders.
Stop saying yes. The best response — especially if you have a hard time saying no — is to show evidence with data.
5 Modern Skills For Highly Effective Sales Teams
Boost data literacy. Influence those on top. Then supercharge sales. Much needed in a world of (too much) information.
1. Patterns in data — Seeing the world around us clearly and understanding nuance, comparing like with like. Realising that everything doesn’t fit into a simple box. Every client, every deal is different. And the power of seeing how things are actually distributed, irrespective of our goals, or what we think (or want) to happen. What if there was a way to see how things really are?
2. Communication — Can you read for content? Digest analysis? Can you write to be understood? Can you stand up and express yourself? Can you answer good questions? Listening and speaking, reading and writing, presenting and critically assessing. Displaying empathy. Using all of these skills to work together.
3. The scientific method — Understanding what we know and figuring out how to discover the next thing. Learning to do the reading, do the analysis and show your work. There’s no point in memorising textbooks. Too much information can often feel like no information at all. So what if there was a way to do the analysis, adapt on the fly, respond and resolve issues intelligently, thoroughly, within a single meeting where the issue was raised?
4. Programming — Not literally the ability to write code. Instead, thinking in ways that a computer can help you with. Knowing when algorithms, computers, AI (call it what you want) can reliably solve problems. Propelling work forward.
5. Decision-making — using all of the skills above to make better choices. Collaboratively.
Here’s a question: If you could work for someone who had these skills, would you want to? Would you want to embrace these skills — especially in meetings that matter?
If the answer is yes, there’s a super efficient way to establish all of these skills, building a habit of looking at data, communicating clearly, presenting analysis intelligently, and bringing stakeholders together. Designed for sales teams, the rise of automated analytics and decision intelligence, is powering commercial teams at Microsoft, Westpac, IAG to save time and get important work done. Establishing all 5 above mentioned skills in less than 2 hours, then building a habit to improve on, every single day.
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