Waging War or Sales

One of my favorite things is to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and find ways to apply it to various events in life. Today, I want to take one of the passages and relate it to an overall sales strategy.

This is the quote from Sun Tzu:

“When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust their strength.”

There are probably a number of ways we can apply this to sales and a sales strategy whether it be making cold calls or just the overall performance of your sales team.

The sales process can be long and grueling, I think we call know that for most products and services it can take a while to close a sale. It can take even longer to develop a sales pipeline that will continually produce effective closures and ultimately revenue.

Every day you must work toward closing deals and making sure your pipeline stays full by cold calling as part of your overall sales strategy. The problem is, over time this process can dull your abilities. You can fall into ruts or just get to the point where you are only putting half the effort into it you used to. You might not even realize that you have started to fade.

The best companies realize that they need a sales revitalize or training program that not only continually train their personnel but also teach them new methods, reaffirm old ones and let their sales staff exchange best practices.

Taking time away from your pipeline to work with your peers or get training from outside your organization is vital to staying on top of your game. Just like the soldiers Sun Tzu is referring to your weapons or sales ability will become dull over time, especially if you have hit a dry spell where you have not made any sales in a while.

As Sun Tzu says your ardor or enthusiasm and passion will fade over time. Yes, it will fade more quickly if you are not closing sales but even if you are having success you will still lose enthusiasm over time. This is normal whether we are talking about sales or anything else in life. If you have been married for a while you may have noticed a drop in the passion in your relationship. Just like marriage, all things must be worked on if you are to stay sharp and effective.

Take time periodically to self-assess your abilities and drive as part of your personal sales strategy. If you have sales people working under you, take the time to have training a few times per year. Even if it is just peer training where you get together and role play sales calls or have your salespeople discuss what is working for them.

Even better is to have some sort of outside consultant or motivational speaker come in at least once per year in addition to your regular training.

The point is, you have to keep your sales drive sharp and ready for battle. You have to make sure you keep your passion and enthusiasm over the course of a very long and difficult sales process. Sales is the war that never ends, we need to find ways to stay sharp and ready.

Don’t forget enthusiasm is one of the key traits of a sales person we talk about.  

 

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