Dave Stein, Principal at Dave Stein, Inc. and Founder of ES Research Group, Inc.
Replicating the “magic” of the top producers in any given sales organization has been an ongoing and stubbornly elusive challenge for business and sales leaders for years. Theories, tactics and so-called silver bullets abound, capturing the industry’s attention for a time and then flaring out just as quickly, often falling victim to their own ubiquitous popularity. Because repeated efforts continue to yield disappointing results, managers have learned over time to reduce their expectations for training, being satisfied with moving their average performers up into a better-than-average bracket, and leaving their top producers to do what they do, their successes enveloped in mystery.
My friend and colleague, Mike Kunkle, who has spent much of his sales career studying differentiating factors that
drive sales results and building effective learning systems around what he’s learned, has recently taken up the challenge of identifying just what sets the top 4 percent of sales producers apart from everyone else. Through his analysis, Mike has identified seven areas of differentiation. “One of the clearest distinctions and most critical skill sets of the seven is value creation,” he wrote in
a blog post. “The ability to create value when selling is as close as we may come to a silver bullet for our profession.”
Value Creation, Mike says, is supported by four pillars that are not covered in typical sales training: Financial Acumen, Operational Acumen, Customer Acumen, and Solution Acumen. “Sure, you have to be able to diagnose a need,” he says. “Yes, you have to have negotiating skills. But these four ‘acumens’ are the factors I’ve seen that really make the difference.”
Perhaps the most significant and the most elusive of the four pillars, Financial Acumen is the sales rep’s “ability to speak in real financial terms and to understand how what they do impacts another organization’s bottom line in ways that the particular buyer they are speaking to cares about,” he told me.
Operational Acumen represents the sales rep’s ability, whether through experience or just the way they’re wired, to understand how things get done in an organization and to be able to navigate their politics. “I’ve seen reps with this skill counsel their buyers on how to get things done within their organizations,” Mike said. “That’s how they get the sale made.”
Of the four pillars, Customer Acumen and Solution Acumen are the most likely to be found in typical sales training, and they go hand in hand. “This is understanding what the real issues are that the buyer is trying to resolve. What are the implications or impacts if those conditions are not resolved?” he said. “And then how do you tie your sales solution to that?” The key, he continued, is framing it in that Financial Acumen, “so you can talk about how to really move that needle and provide value.”
Mike believes, and I wholeheartedly agree, that the imperative for sales leaders is understanding how these things play out within their own sales organizations and then deeply customizing the training they need to replicate those behaviors. In some cases, an outside training provider isn’t going to be able to customize deeply enough, or the cost will be prohibitive. In that case, you will have to build some of these things in-house.
“Then step back and understand that the path to sales growth is through customer focus. Build your customer acumen and line up your solutions to that,” he said. “Train around how you personify which buyer and which persona, and which message and when to deliver it.”
In other words, have the sales rep walk through the entire process, so that the training outcome is what they really have to do in the real world.
There are as many approaches to training salespeople as there are sales training companies and learning organizations. My advice? Take a look at Mike’s four pillars and see how your curriculum stacks up. If there are gaps, they need to be filled.
