Leading Growth

6Strategy and Alignment

THE NEW SALESPERSON you hired isn't selling the way you believe they should. At their last job, they were taught to win deals by promising a lower price than whatever their prospective client was paying. You are unhappy that the salesperson keeps asking you to support this concession, not just because it's unnecessary but because it reduces both your revenue and the profit you should be capturing for improving the client's results.

If you want your team to succeed in creating and winning new opportunities, you need to provide them with an appropriate strategy and align all your efforts to that strategy. Your strategy provides guidance on how you compete for and win opportunities—and new logos. No matter what strategy you pursue, it is best to be a purist, never deviating from your choice and requiring your team to use the same strategy in all situations.

Most sales leaders explain how they intend to compete and win by sharing the name of their sales approach: “Solutions Selling,” “Challenger,” “Strategic Selling,” “Consultative Selling,” “Needs-Satisfaction Selling,” and so on. But these are approaches, not strategies. (These approaches are more branding than substance.) Put another way, they'd all qualify as separate species under the genus “Consultative Sales Approaches.” In that model, my own approach would be Genus: Consultative Sales; Species: Level 4 Value Creation™. There are many solid approaches in that genus, but you shouldn't confuse them ...