You Can Fly a Plane in Five Easy Steps (And Other Ridiculous Lies We Tell Ourselves)

I was on a call recently with a very smart sales leader with a strong vision for how he wants his company to sell. His approach is proactive, ambitious, and thought-out. He knows which data points to track, how to create reports, how to guide his sales team, how to position the company, which methodologies he wants to use, and what the optimal sales process looks like.

In other words, he knows exactly the Way of Selling his company should strive for.

But what he doesn’t have is a way to make all of this actionable for his salespeople. He’s using one of the big-name CRMs, which is a great tool for capturing data and information, but not the best tool for creating the behaviors he wants to see on his sales team.

It got me thinking about how most sales platforms are set up to guide salespeople through a staged sales “process.” But not to guide them through everything that needs to happen during each stage.

Imagine a Staged Checklist for Flying a Plane

Commercial flights are one of the safest ways to travel, thanks to a rigorous culture and practice of safety. Every person involved in preparing for and flying a commercial airplane uses a detailed checklist for every aspect of the process.

This prevents common human errors and ensures that the practice of safety is baked into the everyday behaviors of the flight team.

But imagine if your pilot’s entire checklist was only simple stages.

1. Sit in pilot’s seat
2. Take off
3. Fly
4. Land
5. Exit plane

It would be completely useless. One hopes that your pilot knows what to do within each stage, but one mistake, one missed step, and the plane might not get where it’s going.

You can apply this to almost any profession. A surgeon whose entire process is described as scrub in, cut patient, perform surgery, close incision. A housing construction manager with a one-page document describing the construction “process” as: Design building, prepare ground, build walls, add details, deliver keys.

It’s patently absurd… so why do we do it in sales?

Your Way of Selling Is More Than a List of Stages

Complex selling isn’t brain surgery or piloting an airplane. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, and it doesn’t mean salespeople don’t need guidance to get it right. (That said, one could argue that B2B sales is more complex than flying an airplane, as it is less mechanical...)

Your company’s Way of Selling is a key differentiating point from your competition. Stakeholders who feel understood and whose concerns are directly met by your sales team are far more likely to sign with your company. Solutions that are tailored to the real needs of each customer are more likely to close deals.

Your company’s Way of Selling is a key differentiating point from your competition.

Customers whose experience with your sales team is consistent, on brand, and trust-building are simply more likely to buy.

All of this takes more than just knowing which stage of the process you’re in. Salespeople need to know not just where they’re going, but how to get there. They need not just stages, but milestones, steps, behaviors, conversational skills, on-demand guidance, and consistent reminders and quality coaching to do the next right thing.

Behaviors Require Consistent Reinforcement

Your salespeople want to do the right thing. It might not always seem like it, but most of them are motivated to learn and practice the behaviors that will actually win them deals. That’s what they’re there for.

But behavior change is hard. You can send them to training, and they’ll try to implement for a while… but unless it’s reinforced daily, it won’t stick.

The sales leader I spoke with recently said that’s the wall he keeps hitting. CRMs will give you data and reports, and they might show you what’s happening at a particular company.

But there are not many tools that will put the right behaviors in front of salespeople every day, step by step, within their workflow, so that they don’t have to go looking for it. Of course, that’s why he was talking to me. Membrain has those tools.

But the take-away for you is this: If you haven’t thought past the pipeline stages of the sales process for your salespeople, then you are losing out on developing a competitive edge. You can’t just expect salespeople to know what to do: You’ve got to educate them, show them, and then you’ve got to hold them to it, every day.

If your sales tools aren’t allowing you to do that, then you need to find tools that do, because the airline whose safety behaviors are reinforced at every step of the way is the airline that gets the passengers home safe. The pilot whose behavior is reinforced at every step of the journey is the pilot who gets the passengers home safe.

And you want your salespeople to get your customers home safe.