Becoming an entrepreneur might seem exciting, but to start a business, one must typically follow a set of rules that ensure your establishment stays afloat in the competitive business world.
To maintain your company’s success, you must learn how to effectively sell your products or services to your target audience. Motivational speaker and sales performance trainer Chris Harris provides executive consultation for the additive manufacturing industry, where an essential part of his work revolves around improving global sales performance.
For 25 years prior to his sales career, Harris sold his elite brand of close-quarters combat training both domestically and internationally. In 2015 he began to transition out of full-time combatives training as an independent contractor into additive manufacturing technology sales. This proved to be a very profitable decision, as it only took him a few years before his success in sales skyrocketed. His subsequent book, Phase Selling for Additive Manufacturing, highlights the sales methodology he created and implemented to achieve his goals at a very fast pace.
During this journey, Harris noticed that many entrepreneurs are not aware of how to effectively implement sales tactics in their day-to-day business processes. Below are two important pieces of advice Harris offers to new business owners about selling their products or services.
Develop or Adopt a Sales Methodology
When Harris provides executive consulting services to sales organizations, the first thing he examines is their existing sales methodology and its adoption rate by the sales team. Having a methodology in place is only half the battle. Getting everyone to use it, in its entirety, is a different matter.
A sales methodology is a documented framework that clearly outlines how a sales professional and each member of their sales support team will approach every step or phase of their sales process. This sequence of stages introduces discipline and routine through a regimen of best practices and selling principles that are adopted and followed by every member of the sales team. By doing this, success becomes repeatable, transferable, and scalable.
Develop or Adopt a Sales Process
As a veteran of the United States Military, Harris understands the correlation between having a unified process in place and enjoying mission success, campaign after campaign. As an American inventor with numerous patents under his belt, he also understands the risks associated with skipping steps or shortcutting a process in an attempt to achieve faster results.
A sales process is vastly different than a sales methodology; a process is how a qualified opportunity moves and matures through the sales funnel. A process also determines when the probability score is increased as the result of key tasks being performed and completed in a way that excludes any misinterpretation or ambiguity.
In summary, a methodology refers to how a product or service will be sold within a company or organization, and a process refers to what probability score will be assigned to a sales opportunity as certain tasks or milestones are completed. For an entrepreneur to achieve long-lasting sales success that is repeatable year after year, they will need to implement both a methodology and a process.
