The “S” Word – Part 6 Planning the ABCs

Editor’s Note: For the final installment of this series diving into the world of sales, part six explains a simple and effective three-part process to building a personal sales plan. If you missed it, check out the previous installment in this series, The “S” Word – Part 5: Pitch Perfection, or start from the beginning and catch up with part 1, The “S” Word – Part 1: Who’s afraid of the big bad “S”?.

---

In the S-Word, we’ve dipped our toes into the shallow end of the sales pool. I hope you’ve seen that selling is nothing to be scared of. And the skills you need to be successful in sales are the same as those required to be a valued member of the market research team – a good consultant. 

The best consultants I work with, both sales and service focused, have one thing in common: they have a plan. Now, this isn’t about creating a Gantt chart or making sure your subscription to Monday.com is up to date. This is about having an overarching sense of direction. It’s about recognizing the activities and considering how to use them to move you closer to sales success.

So, I wanted to round out this series with my recommendation for building your personal sales plan. A simple but effective three-point process to keep you focused and on track.

A) Raise your selling awareness.

Sales can often feel like a target-based business. And it is. Knowing how much revenue is needed to turn a profit is important. It’s equally important to break that figure down into a tangible target for any individual tasked with growing business revenues. But while targets help you visualize what success looks like, they won’t help you find your way to that success. 

If selling is only part of your role, you probably don’t have specific sales targets. I’d change that. Set yourself some personal goals to achieve. Why not aim for five great conversations with potential new clients a month? Or, if you have client meetings coming up, try to find three new things in those meetings that could help lead to a future sale.

What you’re aiming to do is bring selling into focus. Instead of shoehorning a sale into a conversation, be genuine and curious in your approach. You want to be helpful and do what’s best for the other person or business. It’s about thinking more strategically in your day-to-day interactions with customers. Targets and goals can be as much about the journey as the destination.

B) Adopt curiosity-led thinking.

You’re in market research, so use those skills. Map out what you know about your client now and highlight what’s left to discover. Plan ways to learn what a client wants to achieve with their business. Do some desk research, talk to their customers and contacts, or ask questions directly of the client. You can be honest about why you’re asking – you want to know more to make sure you’re not wasting their time.

How are you linking your team’s offer to their department’s goals? Your aim is to match their points of pain to the services and products you provide, even if you’re selling your team internally to another department.

All this requires a curious mindset. It’s easy to get locked into the task at hand – to your clients’ current research requirements. We need to think broadly about their world. Make the connections they can’t yet make. Prepare to be at the front of their minds when they do make them.

C) Stay flexible.

Business, as in life, does not move in a straight line. A good plan is a flexible plan. Understand your clients’ needs today and anticipate where they will be next month, in six months, or a year from now. And as they adapt and change, you want to be flexible enough to match them.

Flexibility is about being open to possibility, then moving appropriately when change occurs. Practice scenario planning by exploring the environments where your clients operate. Map different potential outcomes and then link how your products and services can be useful.

You may have noticed that A, B, and C share something in common. The points of the plan are a friendly alternative to the old-school sales ABC mantra: Always be Closing. The new sales and selling ABC mantra is Always Be Connecting. This is the main takeaway from this series: connection is the key ingredient to successful selling.

We’re social creatures. We crave interactions with others to thrive. Maintaining healthy relationships with family, friends, and peers can profoundly impact our mental health, emotional stability, and overall happiness. Connecting human to human is a critical part of a salesperson’s success. It allows them to build and maintain relationships with potential and existing clients, leading to increased trust and loyalty. And, ultimately, sales.

By engaging in social interactions with customers, we can better understand the very things we’ve been exploring in this series: their needs, preferences, and pain points. This understanding allows us to tailor our sales approach appropriately. Connection allows us to demonstrate expertise, build rapport, and establish ourselves as trusted advisors to our clients. Becoming skilled in social interaction and connection can help you leverage networks that generate referrals and expand your customer base.

In today’s highly competitive market research environment, the ability to connect is the skill that will differentiate you from others – your unique style and offer.

Even in B2B selling, people buy people.