Tyrone

In the business world, we have all heard the different formulas for success and different areas of focus that help ensure high performance in sales. It is also likely that you are unable to recall these secret formulas due to their complexity and inability to stand out. If you have something to sell, manage a sales team or are responsible for sales in anyway, this formula will help ensure the long-term success of your sales team. When implemented and managed effectively, the Sales Performance Formula will help your sales team accelerate revenue and move towards sales excellence.

Within each category of the Sales Performance Formula there are many areas of focus. To keep it simple and easy to manage, the categories are broken into three main topics. The Sales Performance Model is as follows:

Attitude + Activity + Skill = Performance

Attitude
Lets start with attitude. Attitude is first for a reason. It is by far the most critical and overlooked element of successful selling. Within the attitude category, you will find many factors, including self-esteem, self-confidence, ability to deal with adversity and defeat, burning desire to succeed, personal motivation and more. Without the right attitude, a sales person is almost guaranteed to fail. In my career, I have met many talented sales people who did not perform to their potential due to their poor attitudes and tendency to identify the reasons things cant be done versus looking for ways they can be done. You can be the most skilled sales person in the world, but if you have a negative attitude, dont believe in yourself or dont believe in what you sell, you will never reach your fullest potential.

Activity
Activity is best described as the actions and initiatives a sales person does in order to identify prospects and move them through the sales process. In some sales models, activity is defined as how many new prospects you meet and speak to. In other models, it is the number of phone calls you make. In every sales model, activity drives results and is the engine of the sales process. Whether people like it or not, sales is a numbers game. The more prospects you speak to, the more prospects you will identify that qualify for your products or services. The more qualified prospects you identify, the more customers you will acquire.

Skill
Skill is how well you are able to perform your job. From sales skills to communication skills to presentation skills, skill is a category that requires constant attention and professional development. Within the skill category also falls the knowledge and understanding you need about your products, services, industry and competition. A successful sales person must become a student of their profession and constantly study, learn and practice applying the skills they need to succeed. With all of the focus areas within the skill category, you must continually develop the skills critical to your success.

There is a lot more to each of these categories and each category requires programs, initiatives, coaching and accountability in order to maximize selling within your organization. The foundation must first be laid and the focus must turn to results. All too often, companies scratch their heads trying to figure out why sales are not meeting expectations. Those days are over. If your sales team is not performing or you would like to maximize an already successful sales model, refer to Attitude + Activity + Skill = Performance and start digging. The reasons for poor performance are within one or more of the categories in the Sales Performance Formula. Happy selling!

Christopher Thompson is the Founder and President of Catch 22 Solutions, a sales performance consulting company and a former Director of Sales at PC Connection, Inc. For more information visit http://www.catch22solutions.com