An Overview of Sales Methodologies

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The task of the salesperson is, of course, to sell. However, before doing this, the salesperson has three equally important functions to perform in order to achieve this objective.

Introduction to Sales Methodologies

The task of the salesperson is, of course, to sell. However, before doing this, the salesperson has three equally important functions to perform in order to achieve this objective. First, they need to gain an in-depth understanding of the products and services they are selling. They need to understand their features and benefits and how they can satisfy customer needs, and they need to be skilled in the methods of presentation. Second, they need to know everything regarding their customers: their needs, buying procedures, and personalities. Finally, they need to have a good level of selling skills. These skills can be learned over time through experience, job rotation, and by participating in various training and skills enhancement programs. The salesperson also has to identify potential customers and work to develop leads, prospects, and customers. All prospective customers are different and unique. Product, business, and basic buying characteristics are the unifying and strategic areas of sales.

There are many sales methodologies and practices being used by organizations worldwide. This chapter will review a number of well-known and less well-known sales methodologies. Some of these methodologies have been in existence for many years and are still relevant, while others are relatively new. Used correctly and in the correct business situations and environments, all of these methodologies can achieve the ultimate objective of the salesperson – to sell and, in so doing, satisfy customer needs. In doing so, they achieve their own personal sales objectives and targets and satisfy the financial and growth requirements of the supplying organization. All of these methodologies have a common goal: they are used to make better salespeople. The desired end results will be varied dependent on what is at stake and what can be achieved in real terms within the different target territories across all markets.

Key Sales Methodologies and Their Principles

Of course, all of these methodologies are built on the same fundamental selling concepts that we’ve talked about in this book to this point – they’re just different and maybe unique approaches to the application of those concepts to the sales process. A word to the wise, however – don’t try to become an expert in all of these methodologies. Choose one that really resonates with you and fits your particular sales process and become adept at applying its principles and strategies to your sales efforts.

– SPIN Selling
– Solution Selling
– Strategic Selling
– Conceptual Selling
– Miller Heiman Sales Techniques
– Target Account Selling Process
– Customer-Centric Selling
– The Challenger Sale

There are a handful of popular sales methodologies that are often talked about in the context of selling, and they’re identified with real personalities in some cases. These methodologies include:

Implementing Sales Methodologies in Practice

Implementing a new (or established) sales methodology is a significant project in its own right. Any number of foundational sales training courses can be readily available to keep the sales force up to date. The full range of new training provided to the sales force will include new offerings that are frequently linked to the newly obtained skills. If all the newly trained material is not sufficiently applied, then the results may be disappointing. Long-term reinforcement results in automatically using the new techniques and the training investment made in the sales force is completely realized. Finally, the results. If earlier invested funds and management priorities in training methods, new tools, such as commercially available software modules and support professionals provided with help the sales organization become the best that it can be, helps everyone improve their results.

For most businesses across all industries, employing a specific sales methodology that everyone in the sales force knows, trusts, and is well-prepared to execute is fundamental to success. However, just selecting and adopting a specific sales methodology is a significant undertaking. Over the past several decades, no small number of these sales methodologies has been developed and used by both corporate and field sales organizations around the world. In this chapter, we examine the issues surrounding the implementation of a specific sales methodology that have been dealt with by the training, tools, and support required to ensure the successful execution of a given sales technique.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Sales Methodologies

Guideline 1: Understand Your Sales Problem Before Making a Selection. To be successful, you must first understand the problems your sales team is encountering. Rather than guessing, or relying on time-worn cliches like, “Our salespeople talk too much and listen too little”, why not expend a little time and effort up front identifying what is wrong and then fix it? Targeted training within your organization can then be focused on the true cause of low sales effectiveness, which may or may not be related to the list in the preceding paragraph. Knowing that training methodologies are tools which may or may not be effective once implemented, it is an empirically validated matter that significant percentages of sales teams exposed to each of the tools have been able to realize improvements in sales effectiveness provided the tools were effective in helping correct the sales team’s underlying problems. Because it has been so much the trend in recent years, let us be clear that teaching salespeople to be better educators and consultants is not the next wave. In fact, more and more sales are reverting to the tactics used in the mid-20th century to bridge the problems that buyers are experiencing in finding a solution that is effective and will continue to be so. Buyers could benefit by acknowledging the complexity of their own buying process. To that end, entire methodologies have been, and more continue to be, developed to bridge this gap and be more effective at providing solutions and behaviors guided toward better closing more sales.

Let’s move on to the meat of this paper, focused on the description of different sales methodologies. Before doing so, however, it’s important to note that not all sales methodologies will work equally well for all organizations. The most important criterion is not whether a sales methodology is popular or has been highly successful in a wide variety of sales organizations, but rather how effective that methodology can be in your organization under your current market conditions. Failing to recognize this principle can result in literally hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on training solutions that quite simply have no ability to help solve the identified problem when the sales team returns to the field with the new information. Worse still, if sales objectives are increased to make up for this lack of effectiveness, the risk is borne not only by sales management, but by top level management whose sales and profit expectations aren’t being met.