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Sales Strategies

Strategic Selling Skills

By Craig James, Founder, Sales Solutions

Use great questions, and you'll unlock the secrets to winning your prospect's confidence, and with it the keys to his kingdom.

Many skills are needed to be successful in strategic sales, but I'm going to suggest three that are fundamentally necessary. Let me preface my suggestions by saying I won't be including anything having to do with prospecting, which is a whole area unto itself, and which is not peculiar to strategic sales. Rather I'm going to address situations where you are already engaged with a prospect.

My top three skills for strategic selling, then, are:

Asking great questions
Listening critically
Gaining agreement at various stages of the sales cycle

So why did I pick these three to be the most critical? Because without them, none of the others would be relevant. You won't be invited in to make a presentation if you can't uncover enough useful information to qualify your prospect. And that qualification process consists, as we all know, of asking great questions and listening to the answers (both what's said, and what's not said). And if you aren't gaining agreement along the way, well, I suppose you could have a forecast, but it wouldn't be a terribly strong one - certainly not one in which your manager would, or should, have much confidence.

Let's look more closely at these three skills.

Great questions consist of a series of qualifying (and disqualifying) questions, probing questions (to understand business needs as well as personal motivations), and trial closes (which gets us into skill #3). Use great questions, and you'll unlock the secrets to winning your prospect's confidence, and with it the keys to his kingdom.

Listening is an ability most of us have; critical listening is the development of this inherent ability into the skill of listening with intent, with purpose. Listening to understand the goals and challenges, fears and constraints of your prospect (and by "prospect", I mean all the players involved in evaluating your offering), as well as what will motivate them to select you, or to advocate on your behalf. It's listening to determine your prospect's evaluation process, and using that information to develop your own selling approach for this opportunity. Listen critically, and you'll absorb those secrets you've unlocked, and be able to use them to your advantage.

Unlike transactional sales, strategic sales take a long time to come to fruition - typically 3-12 months. There are too many opportunities along the way for a deal to derail - for reasons which often are not under your control. It's for this reason that I consider gaining small agreements along the way the third of my top three important skills for strategic selling.

Craig James is the founder of Sales Solutions, a sales consulting and sales coaching business. He has over 15 years' experience in sales and sales management, primarily in technology, software. He's helped dozens of sales people, business owners, and entrepreneurs sharpen their selling skills, and close more business, faster. He can be reached at info@sales-solutions.biz, or toll-free at 877-862-8631.

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