It Isn't What We Know.

I recently was asked by another sales person to offer some coaching on his approach to sales. As I often do, I began by asking a number of questions to gain knowledge of this person’s abilities. At every turn, his response was the same, “I know that, but….” I finally addressed what I believed was his biggest growth opportunity: he was focused on what he knew, what he understood about selling, and not on what he was, in fact, doing.

It isn’t about what we know, it is about what we do – how we perform based on our knowledge.

For those of us who have been students of sales for some time, we know much about selling. We have heard countless ideas, approaches and philosophies about sales. We have tried a number of various techniques. The challenge is to broadly and consistently get the abilities and knowledge that we have into play each and every time we are in a selling situation (which is most of the time).

Take a few minutes today and review your sales knowledge base. Make a list of your top ten sales skills and then review your past few sales interactions and score yourself on the actual performance of those skills. How did you do?

After all, it is about what we do with what we know, isn’t it?