Do the right thing… the sales will follow

By Mark LaRosa on March 27th, 2009

With a company named QuotaCrush, you would think that my opinion is that salespeople and sales managers should be singularly focused on quota.  In fact, that is completely counter to by entire belief system in terms of the best way to accelerate sales.

The strategies that QuotaCrush presents to its clients do in fact lead to more sales, but as you should notice in what is presented in this blog, the bottom line is about finding the right solution(s) for your prospects and your clients, and ultimately doing the right thing for them.  Its when you do this, that reaching, and ultimately crushing your quota is possible.  In fact, its by continuing to do the right thing that consistently crushing quota becomes possible because trust goes a long way.   A goal of a salesperson should be that people buy from you because of who you are:  that the fact that you are talking about this product and pitching it to me means that you believe in it – and I know you wouldn’t present junk to me.  When you have that type of reputation preceeding you, then you have eliminated some of the largest obstacles in the sales process.

I don’t consider myself to be “slick” in my sales; despite that people that know me say that I approach every conversation with my sales brain on.  Just ask my wife… I cannot tell you how many times she says, “Stop trying to sell me.”    I would never sell something to someone if I didn’t believe that what I was trying to deliver wasn’t a solution to their problem.  That’s not to say that everything I’ve ever sold has worked out perfectly for the customer, but I never went into the sale believing there would be problems – or convincing the customer to buy something they didn’t need.  And… in the situations that the product hasn’t worked out for the customer, I’ve always made steps to make it right.

Q1 has certainly been challenging for getting sales done, and my clients and we have had to make some major concessions and creative pricing techniques in order to get several sales over the finish line.  But… in finding the right solution that is win-win, I believe that these clients will deliver tremendous value over the long run for the salespeople and the company.

Someone joked to me recently that it didn’t matter the economy, that somehow I could figure out how to get people to buy things no matter what.  And, it was that comment that precipitated this post.  It is true that in an up economy and in a down economy, there are ways to make sales.  In my circles, though, its not the slick sales approach that allow this to happen – but the salespeople that understand the macro-environment, and work to find a solution that makes sense for all parties involved.  When this happens, people feel comfortable buying.