One of the biggest problems for many salespeople is not understanding that selling is a process not a staticevent. Effective selling is not just closing the sale, better prospecting or more effective sales presentations. Although, all of these are important in their own way, effective selling today is blending each of these together in such a way that the prospect trusts, believes, respects you and your organization and wants and or needs your product or service to help them improve the quality of their life or business enterprise.

For many years traditional sales training focused on the close of the sale as the most important element. Then the 70s and 80s rolled around and the hot topic was prospecting, qualifying and getting to the key decision makers. Then it was the nineties and consultative selling. What will the next decade bring? Who knows for sure. What we do know now is that to sell successfully is only have of the task. The balance is keeping the business.

Organizations expend millions of dollars annually to attract and sell new business. Then they lose it for any number of reasons and have to replace it. So the saga continues. Selling is about finding good potential prospects who can benefit from your products/services, and persuading them to buy from you and then maintaining positive ongoing relationships with them that ensure repeat, referral business as well as positive references. Are you only focusing on any one particular aspect of the sales process as you sell? Are you weak in any particular part?

Each element of the process is intricately related to each other. For example. Lets take prospecting. If you have a poor prospect it will be difficult to give them a solid sales presentation. It will be impossible to overcome their sales objections, and closing the sale - forget it. How about the attitude issues in the sales process. Lets say you lack confidence in the quality of your products. That will affect your willingness to find new prospects. If you do find some, it will impact your ability to give a confident sales presentation etc. etc. etc.

How about one more. Lets say you have a fear of rejection. That will impact your willingness to ask questions and qualify your prospects, discuss sales presentation issues that may be perceived as less that ideal. And asking for the order? Well, not in this lifetime.

I am sure you see my point. If you are going to sell successfully you cant just improve one aspect of the sales process. You cant make up for poor prospecting with tricky closes. You cant make up for poor product knowledge with fancy footwork.