Practical Wisdom from Kahle Way Sales Systems

"I wish I had a more professional sales force." That's one of the common laments I hear from sales leaders. Let's take a look at what it really means, why it is such a common malady, and what you can do about it.

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The world is full of people who are fuzzy in their thinking. Moving from fuzzy to focused can make everything better.

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When you give a proactive salesperson "other stuff" to do, the other stuff will always expand, taking more in time and energy than you anticipated, and rendering the proactive sales efforts to an unacceptable smaller part of the person's labors. While my focus is salespeople, the disease is rampant in almost every job description. Let's unpack this.

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Work with a lot of people, and you have many opportunities to be unethical. Work with a lot of money and the same is true. Put those together, and you have the world of the professional salesperson. Here are ten commandments to help keep you on the straight and narrow.

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Over my career as a sales expert, I've personally and contractually worked with over 500 sales organizations. I've learned some things. Here's one: Very few chief sales officers have a good handle on the economics of the sales force. And very few entrepreneurs think about the economics of a sales system.

Almost everyone can tell you what the amounts of the various categories on a P&L statement indicate. So, sales salaries, expenses, advertising costs, etc. are readily at hand. However, very few decision makers dig deeper. And that means that significant information is never uncovered, and decisions are made on the basis of superficial, and often flawed, information. Let's dig deeper.

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Rapid change is not a phase we're passing through; it's a process in which we're engaged. That means it is likely that the conclusions, paradigms and core beliefs upon which we based our decisions just two or three years ago are likely to be obsolete today. Even more sobering, the conclusions and strategies which we develop today will be obsolete in a couple of years.

There is only one strategy that will see us through: Mastering the competency of changing ourselves and our organizations as quickly as the world is changing around us. That's a skill I call Purposeful Learning

The only sustainable effective response to a rapidly changing world is cultivating the ability to positively transform ourselves and our organizations. That's the definition of self-directed learning.

Should your company allow every salesperson to have their own style of selling, or should you have a selling system to which everyone adheres? Let's dig into this.

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In the B2B world, the relationship between the customer and the vendor, and more specifically, the vendor's salesperson, can be of utmost importance. It doesn't take long in the business to understand that if the customer dislikes you, he is rarely going to see you. And if he does know you and trust you, he is more likely to do business with you. Creating positive business relationships with all of your customers and prospects is, then, a fundamental step in the path toward success for any B2B salesperson.

Having said that, the existence of positive business relationships is one of the primary hindrances to success for the typical field salesperson. I know that seems like a contradiction, but let's dissect how this works.

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In order for an individual or a society to reach its potential, it must continuously grow and develop. That requires consistent, methodical exposure to new ideas. Unfortunately, many people have arrested their development by remaining within their status quos.

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It's more and more popular to blame other people, or some 'ism' for your own circumstances. As long as we claim to be a victim we'll never achieve our potential. As soon as we accept personal responsibility for our own circumstances, we gain the freedom to change them.

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