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You might think that your company is a manufacturer. You might think it is a service organization. You may even believe that you are a solutions provider of some sort.

You are none of these things.

What you are is a sales organization that happens to manufacture something, or a sales organization that sells a service, or a sales organization that provides solutions.

Embracing what you are is the secret to sales growth.

Embracing What It Is You Really Are

You will never produce the sales results and the growth that you want unless and until you embrace what it is you truly are.

It’s not enough that the sales force embrace their role as salespeople; the leaders of the organization must embrace and build a sales culture. If a belief that you are a sales organization doesn’t exist at the highest level of the organization, it doesn’t exist anywhere else.

An organization that embraces sales is an organization that understands that the primary reason for a business to exist is to create customers. The organization aligns all their efforts in acquiring, serving, and retaining their clients.

Do you want a return on investment? Do you want to create shareholder value? Do you want to make a difference in your community, a contribution to the greater good? None of this happens except through selling and executing well.

You are a sales organization that happens to be in whatever you call your business; you are not a business that happens to sell. Once you embrace this and get this right, you can grow your sales.

Teaching the Organization to Sell

It takes more than a passing acknowledgement from senior management that the company is really a sales organization to move the revenue needle. That mindset has to permeate the organization.

Every employee needs to learn to sell.

Every employee needs to learn how to interact with clients and how to perform the fundamentals of sales. They need to know how to ask about needs and identify dissatisfaction. They have to know how to talk about how they can help clients produce better outcomes. Most importantly, they have to be taught to identify and create opportunities to sell and to serve.

The people who work in roles that have a primary function that is outside of sales need to understand that they have to act like they sold the client, and they have to execute for the client.

Customer service? Sales opportunity. Operations? Opportunity to sell and create referrals. Finance and Accounting? Making sure the right investments are made to serve clients better than anyone else. Every role is a sales role.

The salesperson may have made the promises and sold the outcomes, but the responsibility to keep those promises belongs to the whole organization. This is part of the sales mindset, and it needs to be the mindset of the entire organization, stem to stern.

Aligning the efforts of the entire organization around sales is the secret to explosive sales growth.

Try this: “We are a sales organization that happens to sell _______________.”

Questions

What does your company believe it is? What is it really (or what should it be?)?

What is your business designed to do? Is it designed to sell?

Does your organization have a sales mindset?

Does every employee in your company know how to sell? Do they know that they are part of a sales organization?

Tags:
Sales 2011
Post by Anthony Iannarino on May 31, 2011

Written and edited by human brains and human hands.

Anthony Iannarino
Anthony Iannarino is a writer, an international speaker, and an entrepreneur. He is the author of four books on the modern sales approach, one book on sales leadership, and his latest book called The Negativity Fast releases on 10.31.23. Anthony posts daily content here at TheSalesBlog.com.
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