You work for a company and you are expected to design and/or deliver a product or service and at the same time you are expected to increase sales revenue from existing customers. That is the role of a do-it-yourself salesperson. You work for a company that requires you to sell your services first and then deliver those services after you make the sale. That is the role of a do-it-yourself salesperson. In both roles, you can also be expected to manage the delivery of what was sold.
None of the roles have limits. The roles cut across different vertical markets and are not different just for a company of a certain size. Employees of any size company who are asked to serve two masters can either be a doer salesperson or a doer salesperson. A person’s formal job title is not a key indicator of either role. Both roles thrive in the background, below the surface, and are an engine that sustains and drives ongoing revenue streams.
There are some really tough challenges associated with being successful serving two teachers, your primary job role and your secondary job role. What makes the role even more difficult is when the priorities shift from making to selling and from selling to making. People who fill these roles are not considered full-time salespeople and therefore have some additional challenges to face if they want to be successful on the sales side of the equation.
1. They must view sales from a professional perspective that empowers the individual to respect the salesperson role as well as the doer role.
2. They must understand the benefits of using formal processes for new business development, key account management, and strategic selling for complex sales opportunities.
3. They must understand the importance of managing a formal sales channel, including statistics that offer the user the opportunity to improve performance results.
4. They must have the acumen to better manage sales meetings for results that meet the needs of both the buyer and the seller.
5. They must have the insight to better manage the time and internal and external resources associated with closing a sale.
6. They must have the education to overcome the most common sales problems associated with today’s challenging sales environment.
7. They must use a common sales language in order to communicate more efficiently and effectively with each other, with people from other practice backgrounds, and with full-time salespeople who work in the organization.
Let’s start with common sales language. Below are four terms that encompass what salespeople do, whether they’re do-it-yourself salespeople, do-it-yourself salespeople, or full-time professional salespeople. For this article, I have simplified the definitions.
· satisfy the demand: Occurs when a buyer continues to purchase a product and/or service from the seller as a preferred supplier. Renewals require a certain amount of work from the delivery team to ensure that the customer continues to be “satisfied” with what is delivered.
· service request: It occurs when the buyer is looking for a solution to a problem and encourages other vendors to bid on the business, or when the buyer is simply looking to purchase a product or service. Service demand is also the main driver of “complex sales opportunities,” where strategic sales strategy and tactics become critical.
· create demand: It is the essence of new business development and encompasses three important skill sets:
o Being able to engage a buyer in solving an existing problem that has remained unresolved for a period of months or years.
o Being able to identify a need that the buyer did not know they had and being able to involve the buyer in the co-development of a solution.
o Being able to uncover the buyer’s pain and being able to demonstrate how you can alleviate, reduce or eliminate the pain using your company’s offerings.
· defend and cultivate:When the account manager, or account management team, defends the account from competitor encroachment and continues to expand their reach within the account to grow profitable revenue streams in other business units and geographies, and when the account manager, or the account management team, is able to generate revenue from other products and services not previously delivered within the account.
Entrepreneurial sellers spend most of their time meeting demand and defending and nurturing the accounts they work on. Their challenge is to find new sales opportunities in new accounts where they can meet demand and create demand.
Doer sellers, on the other hand, spend most of their time serving demand and creating demand. In other words, they focus on developing new business on new accounts. This does not mean that they ignore Defending & Farming on their existing accounts.
Let’s go back to the initial question; Are you a doer seller or a doer seller? More importantly, if you are a doer seller and you want to transition into the doer seller role, how do you make that happen?
