Developing a New Approach: The 12 Key Elements of Sales Success

About six years ago I hit a wall in my career. I was making my sales numbers, but I thought I could improve my production. I was roughly seven years into my selling career and knew a change needed to be adopted if I was going to take my career to the next level.

Early in my sales career, I concentrated on building base skills around product knowledge, prospecting, and networking. While I was doing well in many areas, I still wasn’t where I wanted to be, even though I had been promoted a few times earlier in my career.  I was extremely successful by the standards of many, but something was certainly missing. I have never been complacent in my career or willing to accept the status quo.  Sometimes I wondered  what was missing. I would also ask myself why I could have a great meeting with a prospective company, only to find they decided to buy from my competitor.

In the spring of 2006, my wife and I welcomed our second child into the world, which truly was a special time for our family. As a father you look at your newborn child and you oftentimes wonder what he would grow up to be like, what traits he would inherit.

A couple weeks after my son’s birth, I was watching the NCAA Lacrosse final four. The game that had my attention was Syracuse vs.  Virginia. As I was watching the game, I looked across my living room to my sleeping two-week-old son and thought about what college he would attend. Would he be an Orangeman? Seconds later an overwhelming thought entered my mind: college tuition for two children!!

“Holy crap,” I thought. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the game any more.  I was in a dazed state for a few minutes. My wife was sitting beside me on the sofa and asked,  “Matt, what’s wrong?”

“Two words sweetheart: college tuition.”

She looked at me and laughed gently. “We have plenty of time, let’s not worry about college tuition now.”   I stared back at her like a deer in the headlights.

After a brief pause, I said, “You know what, you’re right, I just lost track of the score of the game”.

I knew I needed to take action in my career.  My family was young and growing and my income needed to outpace this growth.  I began to reflect on my daily work, scrutinizing everything I had been taught about professional selling to businesses.  Like many other sales professionals, I was taught to discuss how great my company is compared to the competition, and how great my products are, and discuss product differentiators as a core focus during client and prospect presentation. I dominated most customer presentations with this mantra.

There is a level of arrogance to that flawed approach which hurt me from taking my career to the next level.  I committed many common mistakes that plague business-to-business sales professionals and with every lost account I learned something. Eventually I said to myself, I’m going about this all wrong.   I decided to change it up and adopt a far different approach. This approach eventually became a 12-step tactical game plan that I implemented:

• Motivation – It Starts Here – Take Action.
• Understanding the Science of People
• Effective Communication
• Cold Calling and Prospecting
• Leveraging Social Media – Today’s New Gold Mine of Opportunity
• Interviewing the Client
• Understanding Opportunity Cost
• Building and Maintaining the Client Partnership
• Constructing a Proposal That Wins
• Presenting
• Negotiations
• Closing

After adopting this new approach, I made far more sales, which resulted in a 71 percent increase in my overall pay. In addition to the increase in pay, I was also granted a significant amount of stock options. A few short years later I was executing multimillion-dollar contracts and was responsible for managing the most significant client relationships for a Fortune 500 company. All of this happened before I turned 30.
I quickly learned that if I successfully executed each attribute of the game plan, I won more business.  But more importantly, I won the long-term client partnership that subsequently allowed me to build a significant loyal customer base. Instead of differentiating with corny product buzz words, company achievements, and products,  I became the “Differentiator.”  

* Learn how to execute the 12 attributes I’ve discussed here in my new book titled The Game of Business-to-Business Sales: How to Execute a Winning Game Plan.

* Also for more crucial sales-related resources please check out my new website at: www.thesalesjournal.net

Disclaimer: This digital publication is under the official copyright of Matthew Herman, CEO of Matthew James Media Corporation, LLC. It’s our full intent to NEVER sell your email to third party vendors. If you wish not to receive additional newsletters please feel free to email me: info@thesalesjournal.net

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