In the 321 sales system training, "Selling Without Appearing to Sell", the words professional and aggressive have specific meanings.
In the regular world of selling, being aggressive is not acceptable to potential customers...and rightfully so.
The word "aggressive" is synonymous to being a "pushy salesman". Salespeople in all classes (white-collar and no-collar) have been accused of being pushy or aggressive.
Why do some salespeople appear to be aggressive to consumers?
There are two, top reasons:
Ninety-nine percent of salespeople (both white-collar and no-collar) have had no formal sales system training.
Combined with no. 1, many small business owners start their enterprises with no previous selling experience.
Combining no. 1 and no. 2, consumers get a wide variety of trial-and-error sales techniques which do not give consumers the best sales experiences.
Formal sales system training is too expensive for most solo business owners or business owners with a small sales staff. Formal sales system training costs a minimum of $25,000 for about a 8-day session. Next, there are only a small number of training schools and these schools cater to corporations selling products and services starting at $100,000 transaction levels.
Solo and small staff business owners cannot afford to send staff to $25,000 training sessions without some predictability that the training will deliver an expected ROI. Plus, many employees do not have psychological backgrounds to work in a sales function.
At $100,000 and above transaction prices, it is wise investment for corporations to give their salespeople the best training to compete against other companies wanting the same clients.
The old definition of aggressive means salespeople put their self-interests first and give very little consideration to prospects' feelings. And, prospects express their dissatisfaction by rejecting salespeople's pitches, even though prospects still want the products or services. Often prospects will buy products and services from other vendors.
Now, here comes the shocker. 321 Biz Dev defines the word "aggressive" totally differently than most salespeople may have thought.
In the 321 vernacular, "aggressive" means the salesperson works toward meeting his or her goals. There is never a place for being aggressive towards prospects.
321 helps salespeople stay aggressive by hitting all their sales funnel goals. Before a salesperson can consider closing a deal, there must be work done before meeting with a prospect.
The most "aggressive" part of working the sales funnel occurs at the contacting and prospect phases. For most business owners, the aggressive component is 70% of the sales funnel effort. You can now see why many small business owners do not have enough appointments nor close enough transactions.
For new readers and podcast listeners, the five phases of the 321 sales system are: contacting, prospecting, appointment setting, closing and getting zero-cost referrals.
Coincidentally, professional sales systems account for 70% of training time on the contacting and prospecting phases with the remaining 30% spent on setting appointments, closing and getting zero-cost referrals.
What about the word "professional"?
In 321 world, professional means creating great sales experiences for clients throughout the five sales system phases: contacting, prospecting, appointment setting, closing and getting zero-cost referrals.
The best way to remember the 321 Biz Dev sales system is to remember two words: professional and aggressive.
Professional means creating great sales experiences and aggressive means focusing on keeping the sales funnel active by contacting and prospecting people all the time.
321 Biz Dev helps small business owners and/or staff affordably master sales systems over a 6- to 9-month period.
Please give us a call to schedule a free, 60-minute consultation where we ask you questions so you can decide if 321 Biz Dev can help your business reach its goals.
Thank you for reading this article or listening to this podcast episode.
Rick, President