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Building & Sustaining Your Selling IQ As Your Market Differentiator!
The sustained professional is unique from others in their professional vocation and market segmentation, by merely how they view themselves and what they commit to do 24/7 throughout their profession. Can you speculate what these unique selling personal features would be?
Among many attributes or undertakings, it is the dedication and commitment to continued process improvement to their craft, whether their organization, employer or customers demand it or not … It is the professional behavior to on-going personal and professional development to ensure sustained selling IQ of their deliverable’s the market and competition that sets them apart from others!
As a sales professional, it is like any other craft or profession that one would automatically expect a person to be in-tune with all current academics and technician aspects necessary to perform and peak performance. We expect the doctor, attorney, the engineer and CPA to be always exposing themselves to on-line and in-person continuous learning, so as to be best at serving their constituents. Then why would a sales professional have any less of an attitude of greatness and a commitment to on-going life-long professional development.
Research of leading account managers of billion-dollar organizations to the elder sales professional that has sustained a profitable and rewarding career in sales of more than 30-plus decades, all reveal a life-long commitment to reading, listening, observing and learning.
So, what does your internal voice say when you are invited to participate in a learning or training program. If it is optimistic you are a winner and if you hear pessimism and reasons to abort, that has a direct correlation on your immediate and sustained successes that you will not experience.
Building and sustaining your selling IQ for success starts with a personal climate survey and a schedule of commitments at such a level that these action ideas are a norm, a routine, a piece of your mental DNA to greatness. Consider:
- 1. $________ How much money do I spend annually on my Hair/Head (to project the image that you project to the world?
- 2. $________ How much money do I spend annually on my Face (to project the image that you project to the world)? ___________
- 3. $________ How much money do I spend annually on your Wardrobe (to project the image that you project to the world)?
- 4. $________ Combined annually investment of all three (#1, #2, #3), which are investments one makes to project outwardly to the world who one is; superficial KPIs? Now let’s get to what really matters in the life or a sustained professional engaged in the art and science of professional selling, business development, account management, recruitment, client relations, etc. … This next assessment question should be a greater financial investment annually the previous three combined!
- 5. $________ How much money do I spend annually on my Head (all intellectual investments – books, audios, product development learning aids and videos, on-line learning courses, on-line learning portals, on-line learning discussion sites, seminars, self-study, educational conferences and boot-camps, on-line and hard copy publications/periodicals/blogs/whitepapers, etc.)?
So, how do you ensure your investment of the mind always exceeds any other investment you can make? Simple.
View what you do as a profession and if there were a “Certification” for what you do, design out the on-going expectations and commitments to be compliant with your “Certification”. You would have the following Key Point Indicators (KPIs) that you would have to accomplish, you decide at what frequency or regularity of the work product you would have to complete:
- 1. Formal educational course work, as if you were enrolled in a college level program (text book format, academic based learning)?
- 2. Informal self-development and professional-development reading or self-development and professional-development audio development programming participation?
- 3. Real-time current reading and learning from established leaders in your craft and industry via on-line blogs, chat-rooms, articles, podcasts, etc.
- 4. On-line self-study work on the craft of selling?
- 5. On-line self-study work on the technician aspects of your organization, department, deliverables?
- 6. On-line self-study work on your product/service offerings/deliverables?
- a. What is the core product that you sell?
- b. What are the reasons for all other products you sell?
- c. What makes your deliverable better/different/more efficient/more cost effective than any other market options?
- d. What is the core Features of each deliverable you sell?
- e. What are the associated Benefits of each deliverable you sell?
- f. How comfortable are you with the entire line-up of deliverables you have to sell?
- 7. In the field application of what you do at a proven proficiency level of success?
- 8. Feedback from clients attesting to your professionalism and effectiveness as a sales professional and thus representative of your organization?
- 9. Feedback from peers attesting to your professionalism and effectiveness as a sales professional and thus representative of your organization?
- 10. Feedback from supervisor attesting to your professionalism and effectiveness as a sales professional and thus representative of your organization?
- 11. Peer-to-Peer networking groups of established, vetted, proven leaders in what you do to always be challenging you forward?
- 12. Do you have a Mentor or Performance Coach that can calibrate you towards greater successes with accountability mechanisms?
- 13. Other: _______________________________________
If you’re a selling professional and really want to elevate your selling and presentation skills, consider requesting the opportunity to do a full selling presentation/demo to your supervisor/boss – this will be a most interesting experience for all parties involved. If you are a business owner/selling supervisor everyone on your team that is in contact with your marketplace should demo to you before they ever go live in your marketplace. Brand consistency and brand integrity should be maintained as a universal, and this experience will quickly reveal the depth of your selling, product, market IQ.
If you need to benchmark your Selling IQ and Behaviors, shadow the top sales professional in your organization for few days before you go live or as a Quarterly self-tune-up opportunity. Just like rock star athletes, train with, work-out with and associate with other stellar super-stars, so should you in sales.
It is the sustained professional that truly is unique from others in their professional vocation and market segmentation that sets the performance bar for others to aspire towards. It is the sustained professional that views them self and is committed to a 24/7 lifestyle of professionalism, that succeeds!