One of the classic ‘silver bullets’ sales managers like to fire when the pressure’s on to produce more revenue? ‘Try Harder’. Put another way, as Nike would say: ‘Just Do It’. For a lucky few, it can work. For the unfortunate majority, it’s typically a blind shot of effort guaranteed to produce exhaustion on the front-lines and frustration in the back rooms.
Everyone deserves better.
Buyers deserve to left alone if a seller can’t genuinely add any value to the buyer’s business. Buyers deserve a higher return on their own efforts from conversing with sales people.
Sellers deserve feedback with which to learn how effectively, and with whom, they’re creating buyer value. Craftsmanship isn’t borne of rote effort. It’s a product of learning from practice what really works. Perfecting practices requires that sellers get a read on what practices are perfect when it comes to creating buyer value. It’s hard to create more of it when you can’t see how well you’re already doing.
Sales managers deserve better transparency into the effectiveness of sales practices so that when they say to their teams ‘Just Do It’, they can offer meaningful insights on how to ‘do it’ in ways that create more buyer value. ‘It’ then becomes more than a shot in the dark. ‘It’ becomes a predictable path to more craftsmanship in creating buyer value.
So, don’t ‘Just Do It’. Do better.
