Ready, Set, SALES! A Three Phase Sales Strategy to Turbocharge Your Business

Your Business Operating System

Ready, Set, SALES! A Three Phase Sales Strategy to Turbocharge Your Business

I’m so glad you’re here!

Driving sales for my business used to be something I dreaded. Then I had a revelation about this process and now it’s something I really enjoy. Even better, it’s transformed our business.

I cannot promise that you’ll experience the same results as me, but I can say that I believe that this process will help you. I’m confident that it’ll work, no matter how big or small your company is (even if ‘company’ means ‘just you’).

Let’s finalise our series.

Three Phase Overview

The series is divided into three articles and 15 steps. Each phase has specific, concrete steps you can use to level up your sales process. Put them together and you’ll be well on your way to developing a sales process which will help your business prosper, flourish and grow.

Ready. Part 1 explores how to get yourself and your sales team (if it exists) ready for your sales push.
Set. Part 2 shares how you can set your approach and next steps into a repeatable process, giving you valuable insight into how it’s going.
Sales. Part 3 finishes with how to maintain your momentum by looking at your leadership and outcomes.

As always, I hope this content is helpful! It means the absolute world to me when you take time to clap for an episode, subscribe to my stories or use my referral link to sign up for Medium. It lets me know that my stories are helping you ❤️.

Enjoy, and feel free to drop me a DM on twitter, connect on LinkedIn / Github with thoughts and comments 😃

Sales, Sales and MORE SALES!

Every business needs sales. Without sales, we don’t have a business. We have a money sink.

How you and your team approach your sales will be driven by your values and expected outcomes. Even if you haven’t been explicit about this, it’ll be happening.

If you set impossible and unrealistic outcomes, your company is likely to develop values around ruthlessness, normalising burnout and encourage destructive leadership styles.

Conversely, if you intentionally develop positive values and set effective expected outcomes for your company, it will thrive and prosper.

So instead of joining the all-you-can-eat buffet of ‘the latest, greatest and definitely-more-effective-than-anything-else’ train, we’re going to talk about leadership.

Your leadership will drive your sales team. So let’s increase our sales by exploring three ways to bring authenticity, integrity and purpose to your leadership.

It worked for us and hopefully it works for you.

13. Contextualise the Impact of Rejection

Rejection is real. It sucks, it hurts, and it’ll happen to you and your team.

In our previous episode, we spent a bit of time talking about helping our sales people work through dealing with rejection. In that episode, the focus was on helping our people continue to build our sales pipeline, but now I want to go a bit further.

The reality is that every rejection represents a lost sale. No matter how effective your individual coping strategy is, your sales people (and you yourself) know this.

Therefore, it is critical that you, as a business leader, own this for your people. Making sure that you are deliberately choosing to own the impact of their actions and outcomes gives them confidence that you’ve got their backs. They’ll know that you’re right there with them (even if you can’t be doing the exact process they’re doing).

You’ll find that every person involved will achieve your key goals:

Authentically and continually representing the organisation well
Stick to the sales pipeline outlined
Treating prospects with dignity and respect

Doing this consistently will ensure your business to grows, flourishes and thrives.

14. Own Your Leadership

Owning your leadership is critical to sales success. Truthfully speaking, it’s one of the most effective ways to ensure long term growth.

This means the following:

Own the strategy. Yes, you should definitely develop it in partnership with your team — but when it comes to implementation, you own the strategy and the results which come from it. Good or bad, effective or ineffective, as the leader, your team needs to know that you 100% back them.
Own the Outcomes. Owning the strategy also means owning the measures of success (Outcomes). If your strategy is working, then your measures of success should reflect this. If the strategy isn’t working, you want to know about it straight away.
Be Quick to Praise Others. Measures of Success can be a bit dicey. Used incorrectly, they can create a culture of ruthlessness which can be destructive. The best way to avoid such a culture is being extremely quick to praise when the strategy is working, and extremely discreet and careful when it isn’t.
Consistently Reinforce. Finally, make sure that everything you’re doing reinforces what we’ve discussed. Reflect on the strategy. Revisit and remind about the target market. Speak, think and act the message. Set expectations and remind about resourcing. Praise those who are following the process, and reward those who are outperforming.

I’m sure you get the picture by now, but you’ll be amazed how these simple tips will transform your outcomes!

15. Give Permission

Our final step! Wow!

It’s a simple one. With all the previous 14 steps covered, you need to give your people (and yourself) permission.

Here’s a few things to explicitly give permission in:

Permission to succeed. I know right, that one always gets me.
Permission to face unexpected situations. Like when you face that prospect who is weird.
Permission to make mistakes. Like when you totally fail.
Permission to pick yourself up and try again. Especially when the failure has been tough, public and total.
Permission to struggle with rejection sometimes.
Permission to feel good, bad and meh sometimes.

Above all, give you and your team permission to recognise that this is a journey and we’re all on it.

❤️

And That’s a Wrap

That concludes our series. I hope you liked it and got a lot out of it!

Sales are exciting and hope this helps your business thrive ❤️

Your Business Operating System