Why you're not so different from other B2B companies

Here, it's NOT different.

We humans all want to be different. Unique. And of course we are. But there are many things in common. For example, in sales, one thing that is common to all our prospects and all humans is that they make decisions emotionally and rationalise them afterwards. I talk about this here on the importance of developing a relationship with a trusted advisor.

The same naturally applies to the skills required in sales. As already mentioned, sales is a counter-intuitive activity. To be successful, we need to be focused on the others, we need to understand, deeply, their expectations, desire, dreams, pains, etc… Yet, being centred on someone else is, for a human being, no small feat!

So, whilst I constantly hear my clients and their team say: "Our industry / product / company is different", the reality is that people's personalities and the way they buy, at least in the Western world, are very similar and can be codified to help them manage their sales team better and sell better. The B2B sales training and leadership training we roll out in different countries such as France, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and even Africa where some of our clients operate, work on the same principles - and yes, these principles do work -. Plain and simple. Even if we also hear : "Here, it's different" with "here" being the country…  

In terms of performance and expectations from the managers I talk to, whatever country they operate in, they all tell me they want:

• More appointments.

• More accurate forecasts

• Fewer discounts

• Higher conversion rates

• More salespeople exceeding quota - without turning them into "Wolf of Wall Street" clichés -

• Moving them from transactional selling to consultative selling.

• More effective and efficient sales teams.

• Hire more competent sales people.

• More ambitious sales teams with "the fire in the belly"

• Shorter sales cycles

So whatever country an organisation operates in, the expectations are the same. And, of course, the skills needed to achieve these results are the same whatever the country: France, Germany, USA, UK, etc... As mentioned at the beginning of this post, whatever country my customers are in, the challenges and expectations of the teams are the same.

Willingness to sell

I talked about the concept of the will to sell in this post. Without going into detail again, it's important that salespeople and sales professionals, whatever country they operate in, should have a desire, a thirst to succeed and a commitment to do what it takes to get there. The two are of course different.

Everyone wants to lose weight but few people are willing to stop eating sugar or do regular sport. They also need to have a positive outlook on what's going on around them , to see the opportunities and possibilities. They also need to accept responsibility, take ownership of the results, good or bad, and agree to change (what can I do differently) and not look for excuses and point the finger at external factors (the product's fault, the market's fault, the marketing leads aren't good, etc.).

They need strong motivation to know the what - what do I need to do to succeed - or their why - why am I doing this -. These things can be measured, it's the will to sell.

Sales DNA

There are also a certain number of skills that are essential in sales and that support the implementation of an effective and efficient methodology, without of course falling into the "Wolf of Wall Street" trap. These are character traits known as sales DNA.

Wherever salespeople operate, to be effective and implement consultative selling, they need to ask questions that can be difficult in order to qualify in and out and develop, once again, a relationship of trust. To do this, they need to have a low need for approval in order to have these critical conversations.

They also need to be able to focus on their prospects' conversations without projecting into the future or the past, so they need to stay in the moment to stay prospect-centric. They must have beliefs that successfully support the sale - see the white paper on this subject -. They also need to ensure that their own buying habits do not get in the way - we sell just as we buy and it is important that they have buying habits that support the sale, so as not to let their personal buying prejudices interfere with the sale.

The relationship with money obviously needs to be healthy and therefore support a comfort level in discussing investment topics and as selling is made up of many rejections, it is important that sales people are able to recover from rejection quickly.

Sales skills

Finally, sales skills are the same all over the world. Even if they're not the most important and it's more important to have personality traits that support sales to enable the skills to be acquired, they're applicable in France, the UK, Belgium, the USA or any other country (again, I'm specifying Western, I've worked with Asian countries where the cultural factor was a strong influence). Whether it's the ability to reach decision-makers, hunting, the ability to develop relationships, closing, the ability to sell on value or all the others shown on the graph above, all these skills are useful internationally.

So if every human being is different, if every salesperson is different and if every organisation is also different, these skills will naturally vary from one individual to another and the level of difficulty of each role will vary. But the 'building blocks' of a sales professional's profile that enable them to be successful will, whatever country they operate in, all be the same.