Strengthen Weaknesses
Turning Weaknesses into Strengths: Mastering the Seven Core Sales Skills
Forget the advice about just playing to your strengths. In the world of sales, that approach leads to mediocrity. Your success hinges on your weakest link and if that link breaks, you're out of the game.
Mastering sales means excelling across the board. There are seven core skills that you and your team need to master to win in sales. Once you've got them, they're yours for life — like riding a bike. Sure, you might get rusty if you haven't been riding, but as soon as you get back on your bike, you'll quickly get up to speed.
Sticking with the cycling metaphor, think of it like a team pursuit race in a velodrome. You've got four cyclists, but the clock stops when the third one crosses the line - not the first. In sales, if you're only excelling in one or two areas but lagging in others, you’ll find yourself at the back of the pack. According to research from Gong Labs:
Top salespeople aren't significantly better in any one skill. They're marginally better across all of the capabilities.
You've probably seen this in your own team. Maybe someone is a pro at Creating Opportunities, but struggles when it's time to Close the Sale. Or perhaps, someone else is excellent at Building Trust, but can't Implement Strategy effectively which turns them into a reactive problem solver instead of a proactive value creator.
To turn weaknesses into strengths, you need to get brutally honest with yourself. That's where the Sales Capability Health Check comes in. It's a straightforward tool I've developed to assess your team's strengths and weaknesses across the seven core sales skills. Have your salespeople assess themselves and then have their manager or coach do the same. Compare notes and you've got a clear roadmap for coaching and improvement.
Want to see how you measure up? Click here to download a free version of the Sales Capability Health Check. I would love to hear how you and your team scored. Let me know what your biggest strengths and biggest weakness is.
* The seven core sales skills are: Implementing Strategy, Creating Opportunities, Building Trust, Discovering the Need, Presenting the Solution, Closing the Sale and Writing & Reporting.
Mark Windust is an influential Thought Leader in the areas of Sales Strategy, Sales Leadership and Sales Performance. Since launching his consulting practice in 2007, Mark has worked with 1000's of business leaders, salespeople and entrepreneurs’ to help them transform their sales results.