How to Harness the Power of Consistency in Sales
The benefit of consistency in sales is very simple. We know that consistent sales activities produce consistent sales results. Random sales activities produce random sales results. Many salespeople use a sales process to guide their buyers from lead to close, but others opt for strategies that produce more inconsistent results. Weldon Long, interviewed by John Golden, explores the power of consistency in sales.
This expert sales interview explains consistency in sales, including:
- Two main components of consistency
- The importance of following a process
- Common contentions to consistency
Components to Consistency:
There are two main components to creating consistency. The first thing that must be done is that salespeople must hold themselves responsible and accountable for doing the same thing over and over again. They must adhere to the previously set sales process, and stick to it as much as possible, in order to prevent random results. The second component involves holding your customers accountable to consistency as well. Buyers will want to think about things for a while, or talk to the competition, or negotiate on price; each sale usually includes at least a few points of contention before an agreement is made. But, if you can get the buyer to make commitments to certain things, like what they value, or what is most important to them, you can remind them of these commitments if they ever contend them. You provide a gentle reminder about what they said previously, which creates anxiety, or dissonance, in the mind of the buyer, that helps prompt them to stay consistent with their original commitment.
Following a Process:
Say a manufacturer is producing a product, and they are inconsistent with their operations and manufacturing process. They don’t follow a specific course of action, they just walk the factory each day, sometimes doing one thing, sometimes doing another. The quality of their product would be horrible! And they would undoubtedly have a lot of unhappy customers that didn’t get what they were promised. The benefit of having consistency in just as important, yet many people overlook its importance because selling is not as tangible as manufacturing. When it comes to sales, we often don’t apply the same level of consistency. Salespeople think that they can show up to a sales call unprepared and rely on wits and conversation skills to get them through. Sometimes this might work out, but if sales professionals want quality results consistently, they have to follow a sales process.
Contentions to Consistency:
Some salespeople are not fond of sticking to a sales process. But, if a sales process is key to consistency in sales, why is it that sales professionals shy away from using this tactic? One of the common contentions to using a sales process is that it limits creativity. Sales professionals tend to be more on the creative side than the organized side. “Salespeople have great communication and people skills, can be good schmoozers, and we kind of look at a sales process as being put in a straight jacket,” said Long. “But, I think the other thing is that we all face challenges in life, the key to success in sales and in life is learning how to prosper in the face of those challenges.”
About our Host:
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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