"Not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein
-Sales teams are managed with numbers:
How many sales calls did you make?
How many connections?
How many emails did you send?
What was the open rate?
How much pipeline did you generate this month?
What is your weighted forecast?
What is your current performance against quota?
…and so on.
Math is the dominant method of measuring sales productivity today. This is fine for transactional sales. The problem is that Enterprise sales is not a math problem. And making it one creates problems:
Stresses quantity over quality.
Focuses only on tactics.
Supports transactional relationships.
Rewards speed.
These lead to poor forecasting and lost opportunity. By focusing only on math, you become unsure how to proceed and you execute randomly.
Why? Focusing on quantity often means rushing through relationships and not doing deep work on your discovery process. Going too fast can slow your opportunity down. It can be like a sugar high. You get a lot of activity up front but you can burn out your Buyer and then they go dark.
As a sales professional or manager, focusing on math to evaluate your productivity may help you perform better than those who don’t. But is it really helping you reach your financial targets? Will you double or triple your income this year over last?
Not if you are applying transactional sales metrics to Enterprise sales and using math to guide your activity. It doesn’t work. Ask any executive or board member about the accuracy of your enterprise sales forecast! Nuf said! You need to simply shift your approach.
Enterprise Sales is a physics problem!
Now, don’t get excited. I flunked physics my junior year in high school. Let’s just say I was 16 and got a bit distracted. So, we will keep this basic.
At the foundational level, the physics of sales is actually quite simple. It’s about just 3 things:
Time, Velocity and Position.
That’s it.
Math guides your sales tactics.
Physics shapes your sales strategy.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat,” - Sun Tzu. High-performing sales professionals are good at both. So stop being noisy and get good at strategy.
As a sales professional, if you can shift your mindset from focusing only on numbers to focusing & measuring your activity on these 3 elements of physics you will double your performance and income in 4-6 quarters.
Let me repeat that: You will double your income in 4-6 quarters. That’s a year and a half if you are not good at math.
And then be in a position to double it again in the following quarters.
Here’s the breakdown.
Time is when it is optimal for your Buyer to complete a transaction with you. By focusing on math, you press your Buyer to complete a transaction based on your timing. By focusing on physics, you develop deal strategies that compresses the time for the Buyer to complete a transaction that is optimal for them. Deal strategy is about uncovering conditions & events in your buyer’s environment that would compel them to buy sooner. In many cases shorter than your typical sales cycle. And remember this:
Negotiate time not money. Time is more valuable.
Speed is just going fast. By focusing just on sales tactics (how you sell) it’s usually in circles. Velocity is speed plus direction. Every action you take during a buying process should be evaluated for its impact on deal velocity. Deal strategy is about creating the activity and events that give you the power to move in the direction required to complete a successful transaction with your Buyer. Power is the key word here. Do your sales activities have power to them? Will they create velocity or are you just following a playbook because that is what you were told to do?
Position is your location. Your position impacts the timing of your close and the velocity required to get there. Strong positions require less velocity and less time to close. You determine your position on a deal by evaluating the 4 elements or points of the deal compass:
1. People – what relationships are required.
2. Value – what type of value have you positioned your offering to deliver.
3. Profile – have you clearly defined the profile of the Buyer, any competitors or partners and how your company profile is perceived by those parties?
4. Process – what is the buying process and how does that integrate with your sales process.
As you navigate through your deal, a change in any one of these 3 elements of time, velocity and position impacts the other 2. Say, for example, your CEO comes to you and says we really need you to pull one of your deals forward into this quarter as it will have a material impact on the company’s quarterly performance. This change in time requires you to improve your position and increase the deal velocity. Or, if your buyer starts cancelling scheduled meetings your deal velocity is declining. That requires changing the timing of the close and a change in position.
Use physics to determine your deal strategy as you navigate through your deals. You adapt or change your strategy based on the changes in these elements. In the beginning of a sales opportunity your strategy may change once every few weeks or months. Toward the end of a transaction is can change daily or even hourly, especially at the end of a quarter.
By the way, these elements of Time, Velocity and Position are not some random things I pulled out of the air or some other place. They are based on one of the most powerful and proven laws of physics, the Uncertainty Principle.
Once you shift your mindset on your deal strategies from math to physics your world will open and your performance will accelerate. Enterprise sales isn’t complex its uncertain. By looking at your deals through the lens of physics you see your sales strategy as a process of adapting time, velocity & position to manage deal risk and navigate uncertainty.
It’s a simple shift to make. But not easy. “Strategy is the discipline of creating the power to achieve a successful transaction with your Buyer”. The key word here is discipline!
Make the shift. It will change your career.
Navigation: This was written while listening to “Things I Take for Granted” by Larry Fleet.
Artwork by John Beisel. Peace.
