Good business = good sales

Sales philosophies and actions are at the core of good business itself

When I was at school I liked the idea of being a “businessman”, with high powered meetings, travelling around meeting influential people and striking deals. Aside from setting up your own business or running someone else’s, sales is the profession closest to that school boy’s dream. Ultimately, good sales and good business require many of the same perspectives and actions.

Consider the GetAbstract summary of the book “The Definitive Drucker”. Drucker has often been called “the Father of Modern Management”, but his teachings on how to be successful in business were remarkably similar to how to be successful in sales. Consider the following 7 points that summarise his advice to business leaders:

• Be customer centric - Customers belong at the centre of all business decisions. “The purpose of a business is to create and serve a customer.” Sales people find customers, discover and develop their issues/problems (create the customer) and then design and deliver a solution (serve the customer)
• Be selective - Decide who is your customer, and who is not your customer – Sales people decide on a target market and then carefully qualify each prospect, hand-picking the opportunities to spend time on.
• Identify and deliver value - What does your customer consider value? Possibly the ultimate question for the sales person to find the answer to.
• Be proactive… - “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” Sales is one of the most active disciplines in the modern business. As IBM's Thomas Watson said, "Nothing happens until someone sells something".
  
• … but “Don’t confuse motion with progress.” - It’s all about results.
• Ask the right questions – Ask probing questions to drill down to the essential issues.
• Look outside of your business – Strong business leaders focus on the outside world, where customers and competitors are. Just like sales do, day in, day out.

Drucker’s perspective should serve as a reminder to us all as sales professionals that we are at the core of the business.

Good business = good sales.