The top-performing sales professionals consistently engage in prospecting, recognising the necessity of maintaining a consistently full and active sales funnel. As they view themselves as CEOs of their own lives, income streams, and deal pipelines. I think the key to ensuring flow and momentum within the pipeline lies in continuously filling the top with potential opportunities. By prioritising the influx of prospects, salespeople can mitigate closing challenges and approach sales from a mindset of abundance, refusing to yield control of the sales process to prospects. A full funnel enables smarter selling strategies and empowers sales professionals to navigate negotiations with confidence and resilience.
Frame of reference
Does one person or one image describe a whole community?
Communities bring people with similar characteristics and common interests together. There are many ways to think about community, for example, we can look at a community from a system, social, virtual, or individual perspective. From an individual perspective, a poster with a LGBTQ+ or a black guy is not representative of the community, even if they hold a significant role or embody its collective identity.
I think that it's a huge responsibility to be Black in Denmark, and I would like to put in a disclaimer now, as my experience is not the same as every Black person’s experience as everyone has a unique experience.
Awareness always makes a positive change
There is a difference between busy and being productive. Being productive is really about narrowing your focus, it’s about prioritisation and it means you carefully select what’s most important, and eliminating things that are not so important. I think you should invest your time and energy in things where it’s going to make a difference to your goals and outcomes. A successful day is a day where you make massive progress on the things that matter for you. There are only two major things that make you productive in sales, one is opportunity creation and, and the other is opportunity capture.
Contact me via e-mail when you are ready to look at your teams sales engagement, as it’s only when they have the awareness to recognise opportunities and challenges will they begin to nurture healthier relationships with others.
Are you ready to be awakened?
I think that life experience and wisdom are born from emotional pain to help people navigate their own situations. I have genuine compassion for people, and have used introspection after setbacks to gain internal self-awareness. Some major things have happened in my life, and I have been blessed to have some amazing teachers to guide me through. I give back through coaching and have a major impact on people in crisis. I love writing and talking, and I just love seeing people break free from their “old story”. And in this process, I get genuine connection with people and the bulk of my clients are people having an existential crisis.
Leaders will always
Some people believe that leaders are made and others believe that great leaders are born. I think leadership can be learned even if you were born with the personality traits and communication abilities required to become a leader. The soft skills like awareness, sensitivity and understanding are not possessed by all leaders. Good leaders will always:
⁃ Set high standards
⁃ Have excellent organisational and execution skills
⁃ Embrace change and course-corrects when needed
⁃ Take risks
⁃ Embody fearlessness
⁃ Exude passion
⁃ Earn and give trust
Unfit to lead
Yesterday, John Amaechi OBE said, “The passing of a leader who failed to live up to their promises is nothing more than an opportunity. An opportunity for the successor to prove every day and with every interaction that now - finally - integrity will be an unbreakable principle of their leadership.”
I really hope that the next leader will have better awareness, sensitivity and understanding of leadership skills required. Sometimes we forget that not everyone is cut out to hold a leadership role. So, we must ask the candidates what motivates them to want to lead other people. And if they don't emphasise the importance of helping others grow, succeed, and thrive, we should look at other applicants.
Awareness and trust
I recently spoke to an audience of designers and brand owners about the fact that when the world is not happening the way you want it to happen then you have a problem not your customers. I started with a bold statement: “I know that you already make stuff that people want to engage with but are you clear about the fact that consumers will only buy from you for two reasons; they know you exist, and they trust you.”
Here are some examples of the questions I posed and answered:
What change are you trying to make?
How are you going to spend your time and resources?
Would you like to learn how speak up and tell a story that spreads?
The discovery phase
Most salespersons start their presentation by stating the features and benefits of their products and services. Perhaps they should think about looking at business from a different perspective. How do you identify the needs and objectives of a potential customer as they progress from knowing nothing about your brand? Why do they need your expertise for promoting their business?
Awareness - You can help the customer discover the source of their problem by supplying short, easy-to-consume pieces of content that will educate and inform them.
Consideration - To understand and meet this need, you will want to provide the customer with content that educates them on different methods of solving their problem and compares different solutions that you and your competitors offer.
Decision - The buyer at this stage knows what they need and why, they will be more likely to listen when you provide expertise and support their decisions. At this stage, they will be able to see that your greatest concern is providing insight on the best fitting solution for their needs.
Understanding the initial needs of the buyer, along with their preferences and tendencies, will have a huge impact on what you market to them and how you make it visible to them. Contact me via e-mail for your sales training and workshops.
You need to care
Sales persons, I have very bad news for you! Buyers only buy from you for two reasons:
1. Awareness - they know you exist, and
2. Trust - they trust you.
The thing about awareness is that they are making anymore of it. Nowadays, we are getting more and more focused on keeping our attention to ourselves and not giving it to whatever shows up, for example, Senate election in Georgia (USA), the most recent pandemic lockdown restrictions in the UK, etc.
Marketeers have a history of just taking attention and just wasting it, going forward I hope that marketeers will begin to treasure, grow and nurture our attention. And these marketeers will perform better than those who just go around creating panic and emergencies. Marketing campaign: “I made this and it was really hard. Look at me and buy it, as you owe me your attention.” There is no humility, there is no generosity and there is no connection. I think that it would make more sense to patiently try to earn the attention of the people we seek to serve.