Change. Rapid change. Products becoming obsolete. Overnight industry revolutions. Start-ups, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies and reorganizations — no one has to learn more on the fly than those in Sales.
Standing in the middle between two changing forces — their companies and their customers — the learning required by today’s sales professionals has more than doubled in recent years.
Change with the times
There is a popular saying that states: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been.
Sales is not a profession that allows you to coast. You have to keep finding new and better techniques, novel ways to tell your story, more effective ways to prospect and more efficient ways to manage your time.
The Renaissance Salesperson
In some ways today’s sales professional is expected to be like the Renaissance Man of the 15th century, the person who understood everything about the world — its art, its music, its literature, everything society was built upon.
Sales pros must understand the products and services they sell, the needs and wants of customers, the psychology of the sales process and their customers — and, in general, have an understanding of the universe that operates around those customers. And change in each of these segments seems to come faster and faster.
Personal mastery
There is only one way to keep up with these changes: developing a lifelong dedication to learning and a commitment to constant improvement.
Top performers know the power of information, and know their success depends on constantly feeding their knowledge and skill base. Sales stars have an intense drive to improve their performance and a passion for their products, industry and customers.
As technology and the business environment become more complex, the value added by salespeople will increasingly be their ability to solve problems for their customers.
Future sales stars will not only build strong relationships through uncommon service and support, they will generate breakthrough solutions for their customers. They will use new techniques and technologies to gather information, and apply their creative skills to finding solutions that advance their customers’ goals. They will become star solution sellers.
Source: Author and sales consultant Barry Farber