playing To Win & Sales
Kudos to Roger Martin for calling out sales as a major contributor to playing to win strategy and leading to win behavior and effectiveness in his recent article titled Playing to Win & Sales. I agree wholeheartedly with him — sales, sales strategies and sales effectiveness principles and best practices should be researched and taught in schools. There are constructive and productive studies that can be done on winning sales strategy and techniques.
At Procter & Gamble, I spent six invaluable months selling to real world customers through major retail chains, wholesalers, local grocers, convenience stores, drug stores and mass merchandisers. I learned a lot. Retail is detail. Sales is the art and science of persuasion and requires the use of ALL the positive power and influence tools — attraction, bridging and a range of proven persuasion best practices. The pushback and rejection from buyers, store owners and managers taught me invaluable lessons and made me a better sales person.
While I agree with Roger that sales creates mental availability for your brand, product and service, and builds confidence in your company, I also believe that there’s an even bigger role for sales— generating revenue. No customers, no business. No revenue, no cash.
I’ve learned, particularly for small businesses, nonprofits, government agencies and as a freelancer, that the CEO is very much the Chief Salesperson for his/her brand, product, service, cause or initiative.
A few examples:
Time and again at Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Target, Kroger, Publix and Wegman’s, the decisive factor was confidence and trust in the business… beginning with the CEO.
The CEO of a nonprofit better learn how to sell because they’ll be selling all the time — to patrons and beneficiaries, to donors and supporters, to important government and agency stakeholders, and to the staff and volunteers who give so much of their personal energy and time to the cause.
Government, especially politics, is an intensive, never ending sales job.
And, for the 60 million freelancers in America, they have nothing other to sell than their capabilities, experiences and services.
To learn more about sales and strategy, read this article by Leading To Win guest writer, Roger Martin, titled Playing to Win & Sales.