Sales Effectiveness Quiz
April 2010

Sales Effectiveness Quiz

The economy is recovering.  Are you responding to the opportunities that are beginning to present themselves? 

Hopefully, you've used your time well and are now more prepared than ever to successfully bring your contribution out into the world.  To improve your chances for success, we thought you'd find it helpful to take the following quiz.   You can see if there's anything missing in your approach to complex selling environments in the new economy, and get to work on it if there is! 

Remember, complex selling environments involve multiple decision makers for every piece of business you intend to do with your prospective client (from The New Strategic Selling by Stephen Heiman and Diane Sanchez).

1.      Have you revised your offer to effectively address people's new needs and budget restrictions in this current economy?  Are your clients agreeing by taking action?

2.      Have you identified the characteristics of your new ideal client so that you invest your time and energy in the best directions?

3.      Are you focusing on a single sales objective with each prospect so that you are offering straightforward value for a specific need?

4.      Do you have a systematic way of capturing what makes your different decision makers tick - results and personal concerns - for each sales objective? 

5.      Are you able to keep track of the changes that occur in the conversation over time to know what strategic strengths and red flags you must leverage and resolve to optimize your likelihood of success?

6.      Do you carefully track each decision maker's level of interest in your offer and regularly assess the influence they seem to have in the decision?

7.      Are you managing your pipeline according to the different phases of selling - prospecting, qualifying, discovering needs and motivations, closing - that indicate what your work needs to be to solve the mystery of what it'll take to get to yes?

8.      Are you getting sufficient face time with prospects to ensure you are moving opportunities through your pipeline appropriately? 

9.      Are you focusing on your two most important priorities - closing and prospecting - that lead to a sustainable flow of new business?

10.  Is your heart really in your game in a way that results in genuine joy from building offers that lead to expanding your contribution in the world?

There you have it - ten questions that can make a huge difference to your success in 2010, if you have the right answers.  Our focus on organizational effectiveness boils down to honestly assessing and enhancing both the structural systems and culture of your organization.  It's like your mind and your heart - the wise leader knows you can't function very well without both! 

If you know someone who wants to create a sales breakthrough, please pass this article along to them!