For all the sales professionals out there - "FOCUS" framework
F - Field Metrics : How is your territory different? What works? What doesn't work? Who are the decision makers? Who are the influencers? Who are the competitor reps? What are they doing differently?
O - Optimize : Don't try to do everything. Focus on the most contributing products out of the portfolio and plan to maximize sales from your best-products.
C - Customer : Never take your customer for granted. They don't just choose your product. They choose you as well, particularly for B2B. So, groom yourself well. Present yourself and your products both. Your relationship with your customer is the icing on the cake that is your product. That icing becomes the ultimate deal-maker in many cases. So, work on yourself and your confidence as much as you work on your product knowledge. Make yourself useful to them by providing helpful insights, arranging local meets, providing opportunities for their professional growth.
U - Under-promise and Over-deliver : This is the cardinal rule you should never break. The day you do the opposite, you will lose the customer and his/her faith forever.
S - Stakeholder Management : This one is the most intricate yet the most crucial jigsaw piece of the whole puzzle. No matter how much pain you have to go through, always and always make sure that all your stakeholders (your boss, your super-boss) are informed about what you have done in the past, what you are doing today and what you plan to do in the immediate future. Everything that you do is finally meant to take YOU up in your professional growth. So, keep the bosses informed about your progress, your plans and your achievements. Do NOT let the conversation with your bosses revolve around your sob-stories. Your boss wants to know if he has the right person on the job. If you can't deal with your issues, you can't win his trust for better and bigger responsibilities. If you have a genuine issue, do a thorough research on its significance before bringing it up. If you can't define and detail a problem, you would only end up narrating a ghost-story.
Rate yourself on all these parameters (on a scale of 0% to 100%) and multiply all the % scores to see for yourself what your FOCUS score is.
Compared to the traditional Aware-Inform-Negotiate-Close kind of frameworks which are more about handling a sales cycle, this one is simply about managing yourself as a sales-professional.
F - Field Metrics : How is your territory different? What works? What doesn't work? Who are the decision makers? Who are the influencers? Who are the competitor reps? What are they doing differently?
O - Optimize : Don't try to do everything. Focus on the most contributing products out of the portfolio and plan to maximize sales from your best-products.
C - Customer : Never take your customer for granted. They don't just choose your product. They choose you as well, particularly for B2B. So, groom yourself well. Present yourself and your products both. Your relationship with your customer is the icing on the cake that is your product. That icing becomes the ultimate deal-maker in many cases. So, work on yourself and your confidence as much as you work on your product knowledge. Make yourself useful to them by providing helpful insights, arranging local meets, providing opportunities for their professional growth.
U - Under-promise and Over-deliver : This is the cardinal rule you should never break. The day you do the opposite, you will lose the customer and his/her faith forever.
S - Stakeholder Management : This one is the most intricate yet the most crucial jigsaw piece of the whole puzzle. No matter how much pain you have to go through, always and always make sure that all your stakeholders (your boss, your super-boss) are informed about what you have done in the past, what you are doing today and what you plan to do in the immediate future. Everything that you do is finally meant to take YOU up in your professional growth. So, keep the bosses informed about your progress, your plans and your achievements. Do NOT let the conversation with your bosses revolve around your sob-stories. Your boss wants to know if he has the right person on the job. If you can't deal with your issues, you can't win his trust for better and bigger responsibilities. If you have a genuine issue, do a thorough research on its significance before bringing it up. If you can't define and detail a problem, you would only end up narrating a ghost-story.
Rate yourself on all these parameters (on a scale of 0% to 100%) and multiply all the % scores to see for yourself what your FOCUS score is.
Compared to the traditional Aware-Inform-Negotiate-Close kind of frameworks which are more about handling a sales cycle, this one is simply about managing yourself as a sales-professional.
