The Path to Sales Growth through Customer Focus – Part 2

Sales Growth through Customer FocusThis post continues the previous discussion of enabling sales growth through customer focus.

“The journey toward sales growth starts and ends with our customers.”
– Mike Kunkle

Customer Focus Framework for Sales Growth

In part 1 of this series, I shared my Customer Focus Framework for Sales Growth.  The five pillars of this framework include:

  • Modeling Buyer Personas
  • Mapping the Buying Journey and Buying Process
  • Aligning your Sales Process and Methodology
  • Understanding Market Conditions and Buyer Issues
  • Aligning Your Sales Solution Architecture

Last time we discussed modeling personas and mapping the buyer journey and process. This time we’ll discuss step 3, Aligning your sales process and methodology to the buyer journey and buying process. 

If You Want to Shine You Must Align

As usual, I don’t see the need to recreate the wheel. If you don’t know how to map a process (or think you need some support), that’s the first place to start.

Align the Process

If you know how to map a process, here are some other good thoughts for aligning your sales process to the buying process:

A Method to Your Sales Methodology Madness

With the processes in alignment, the next thing to consider is your methodology.  Put simply, sales methodology is your approach to selling – it’s the skills and methods that your sales reps use, to successfully shepherd the buyer from one stage of the buying/selling process to the next, ending in a successful purchase/sale – a win-win decision.

Bruce Rasmussen wrote an interesting post recently on the new LinkedIn platform, called, It’s Not WHICH sales methodology – it’s WHEN!  Worth sharing and thinking about, if you use vendor training.  Nuance and context matter greatly and the only thing that matters for you, is what is happening with your customers, in your world, with your company/products/services and sales organization.

In my experience, designing your own or deeply customizing your sales methodology is what gets the best result.  I typically use sales analytics to bucket sales performers, and then find the differentiating (and replicable) practices of top-producers (compared to the middle), and build my sales methodology around what I learn. What do the top-producers do differently, to move their buyers through their process to a successful conclusion?  Capture that, and train, coach and reinforce to it, and you’ll have the best chance of lifting performance in that big bucket of mid-producers (the B and maybe even some C players.

Sales Growth through Customer Focus, One More Time

In the next and final post in this series, I will discuss the last two steps, which go hand-in-hand:

  • Understanding Market Conditions and Buyer Issues
  • Aligning Your Sales Solution Architecture

In the meantime, thanks for reading, be safe out there, and by all means, let’s continue to elevate our sales profession.

Mike
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Mike Kunkle
Transforming Sales Results with Clear Insight & Focused Execution

Contact:
214.494.9950
<mike at mikekunkle dotcom>

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Mike Kunkle

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