What Separates Good Sales People From Great?

Chris Brindley MBE is a prominent UK Business Leader, Chairman of GreaterSport Manchester and former MD of Metro Bank. He is a leading authority on Sales Management, Customer Experience, Employee Engagement & Satisfaction, particularly within organisations where change is on the agenda. Here, Chris shares with us some tips on what separates good sales people from great sales people.

Acres of Diamonds

I get asked a lot about what separates good sales people from great sales people, and the best way to answer this is to remind them of the “Acres of Diamonds” story.

The two lessons from the story are do you know what an uncut diamond looks like? What would an uncut diamond look like in your organisation? And secondly, before you rush off and sell everything you’ve got and focus on one thing, take a look at what you’ve already got in your portfolio or your organisation because the Acres of Diamonds is a mnemonic for acre.

So, what great sales people do is acquire new business and they are hungry for new business, but they do this at the right cost, they don’t give things away they negotiate well and they understand the value and cost of what they sell.

The R stands for retention, I’m amazed by the number of sales people or sales companies spend all of their time and energy on acquisition and forget to service and look after their existing customers. So, what is your retention strategy? It costs a lot less to keep people than it does to acquire new people.

E is to expand, how are you going to expand the range of products and services into your existing customer base? You probably have a range of products and services but probably only sell one or two to each customer. Spend the time explaining to one or two existing customers the range of products, services and benefits of them doing business with you.

So remember Acres of Diamonds.

Acquire at the right…

Cost, but focus on…

Retention and…

Expansion of your existing account base.

What’s your Acres of Diamonds strategy?

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