80% of our Sales People work hard, but the successful ones work SMART.

How do you ensure that all of your sales people work smart? To be honest, it has never been easy to get all of our sales people doing the same things. In most cases you will have one or two exceptional sales people, several average ones and a couple of poor ones.

It just seems to be the way.

Do we find out what our best sales people are doing and share it as best practice?

In most cases we probably do, but the trouble is most smart sales people don’t really like sharing the whole truth to their success because they like to stay one step ahead.

You have probably heard the story of the salesman who was the best in his industry and sold more shatter-proof glass than any other sales person in the land.

When he was asked what his secret was at an annual conference he reluctantly revealed that he would wallop the glass with a hammer and then ask; how much glass would you like to order sir?

Every sales person in the company thereafter was given a hammer as a tool to sell more glass, and sell more glass they did, sales were up 60%, but at the next annual conference the same salesman was still top of the company.

When he was asked why?? He revealed that he gave the hammer to his prospect and allowed them to wallop the glass before taking their order.

A smart salesman will rarely reveal the whole truth behind his or her success; it is just in their nature.

You are unlikely to get the same performance from all of you sales people. But if you give them a hammer you will increase sales and get a more consistent performance.

The new hammer for sales successes is Sales Intelligence or (SI). I’m sure is a term that you may have heard.

The business of the future will use Sales Intelligence the ones that don’t may get left behind.

What is Sales Intelligence?

Sales Intelligence Systems (SI) is often referred to as the infrastructure that enables your business to grow and increase profits. Your business already has this valuable information locked away in your transaction data. That very data is your Sales Intelligence.

When you hear the term Sales Intelligence or SI people are usually referring to a Sales Intelligence system, this is the engine that helps you interpreted that valuable data into very usable sales information.

Well what Sales Intelligence does your company have? Your company already knows

• which customers you’ve sold to

• Where those customers are

• Who their contacts are.

• You also know what products they bought

• When they bought them.

• How much you sold

• How much profit you made.

• How many they bought

• How your products are grouped

• What outstanding orders you have

You may also know if your customers are a member of a group and what industry they are in.

Having this information is important, but using this information is essential. Sales Intelligence Systems trawl through this data and identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities as well as highlighting customer drift, they then send this information to your sales people in the form of alerts, i.e.

This customer has bought product A and not Product B – Find out why?

This customer has not bought core product from us this week – Find out why?

This customer is in (X,Y,Z) industry and has not bought this linked product – Find out why?

This customer is up on spend but down on margin – Find out why?

The secret to sales success is Sales Intelligence.

Give your sales people the tools they need to succeed.