From Personality Cults to Sales Process Maps: Rethinking Sales Success

In 30 seconds

Sales success has long been built around personalities, leaving new salespeople to emulate revered individuals without much success. A well-defined sales process is a quicker and more effective way to get new hires up to speed. A sales process map outlines the steps, activities, tasks, and behaviours of how your business sells and services. By incorporating the best practices of your top salespeople and aligning them with your sales strategy, you empower new hires to adopt and make the process their own. This approach allows them to observe successful salespeople applying the process, assess their own competence, and learn how to sell better faster.

In 2 minutes

For too long sales has been overshadowed by personalities – those individuals who are revered for their sales success often having built a cult-like status around their personas.

Placed on sales excellence pedestals, many new to sales or sales teams are often told, when inducted, to go out with these sales superstars and be like ‘Fran or David’.

In other words, mimic what Fran or David do.

However, this doesn’t work and causes more harm than good. And it’s very risky too.

If the sales success of your team is built around personalities, what happens when they leave?

Instead of putting our salespeople under the pressure to be someone they are not, the easiest and quickest way to help them get up to speed and sell better faster is to introduce them to your organisation’s articulated sales process map that outlines the steps, activities, tasks, and behaviours involved in how you sell and service in your business.

Mapping a sales process incorporates the best practices – steps actions, tasks and behaviours – that you see your top salespeople doing in your business, and what works best for your go-to-market sales strategy.  This takes sales success out of the realm of personality which is too hard to replicate.

Now when you induct someone new or need to look at how someone is performing, you don’t have to rely on personality, instead, you can underpin any induction, coaching, training and performance management with a well-defined, clear and specific process that allows people to adopt and learn in a manner that can make their own.

So when you send these newbies out with Fran or David, you can say ‘I want you to spend a week with them to see how they apply the sales process. Ask questions, make comments, assess where you are on competent and where you need more work…’ and so on.

This approach is far more empowering and engaging for newbies and it also serves to validate the Frans and Davids who often don’t understand, until now, why they are successful.

More people can learn how to sell better faster, and everybody wins.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

If you want to know more about how to create and map your sales process you can contact us or 03 9533 0000