The processes of selling are well-known, though, of course, what’s most effective and appropriate varies from context to context. And there’s always room to get better at it.
An important question is whether it’s entirely open to a leader with more rounded responsibility for the business or organisation to sell in the same manner. Can they adopt conventional sales techniques? Or do they need to modify their approach?
Of course, you might be thinking business leaders don’t need to sell. They have somebody to do that for them. That’s not my experience. For the most part, business leaders need to at least get involved in bringing new business into their organisation. Indeed that’s often the most important part of their role.
And in comparison with the specialist salesperson, the business leader needs to meet different customer expectations. In particular, the customer infers the organisation’s values from its leader. And these need to match what the customer expects.
And also, because the leader has responsibility for delivery as well as sales, and everything else besides, they need to be convincing about the whole of the business in an end-to-end way, not just that they will be the customer’s representative in the company’s processes.
And it’s very definitely a relational sale if the leader is involved.
What do you think?
How should a business leader approach the sales process? As if they were a salesperson? Or something else?
Interesting article. The MD/Owner should be the ultimate salesperson. However your question should they “sell with the same approach as a salesperson?”. Absolutely. However perhaps not in the way you might think. Or perhaps not in the tone of your blog. A business needs a very clear sales process. From my experience a rare thing indeed. The MD should follow it as much as the sales team. However, the sales process should NOT be the traditional approach which might be what you are alluding too. Who wants to deal with some pushy, tacky, jargon rich, fast-talking, manipulative salesperson? No-one. Often in order to avoid being like the stereo-typical salesperson the MD/Business Owner decides to go super passive. Almost as bad. Instead the whole company could be much better off having a common commerical language and adopt an adult-adult, non-manipulative sales-process where there is always a mutually agreed and mutually beneficial next step.
There are likely to be a number of differences. Firstly the Director will probably not be able to participate in the Sales process in the same manner. This creates the risk of destabilizing the sales work-flow unless either full integrated or clearly aloof. Secondly it is likely to be on a different level, higher up in the buyer’s decision tree or on a bigger scale. Therefore if the customer and offering is different so too must be the approach.