Sales Warrior Lesson 45
Exploring the Limits
Why can't you increase your success rate by offloading
your non-sales responsibilities to others so you can put more
of your time into selling?
Unlike production, most competitive processes have a very
significant failure rate. This fact is the source of Sun Tzu's "economics."
These economics demand more attention to the costs of a sales, which we can
control to some degree, than to the outcome of a sale. The hope is that if we
put more resources into a sale, we will close a higher percentage of sales
making the additional investment worthwhile. However, the history of selling
tells us that this approach is seldom successful.
Indeed, when you invest more resources in a sale, it
becomes harder and harder to analyze that sales process objectively. Your
opinion is shaped by your investment.
The problem gets worse when you ask others in the
organization to invest in your sales. Once you ask others to invest that much into a sale, you
are put into the position of having to close it. The more you invest, the more you want to "force" the
sale. However, you cannot force a sale. Selling is never a matter of force. You
cannot force a customer to agree with you. You cannot pressure a customer to
agree with you. The more force you apply, the more likely it is that a customer
will push back against you.
