Which Sales Methodology Should I Pick?

Challenger, SPIN, Miller Heiman.

Challenger, SPIN, Miller Heiman.

3 of 1000000+ different methodologies.

If you’re a solopreneur, there’s a good chance you haven’t really delved into these yet, but if you’re working at a company over 50 people, you’re trying to figure this one out.

This happens when businesses try to deal with problems of scale (which is a good thing), but also difficult to properly manage, measure and improve.

Especially when you have 200 different sales people, all doing things differently and you have no idea what is working, or why.

Enter. Sales methodology.

“Businesses need our sales team to be on the same page. And not just the salespeople but those who support the process, such as consultants, sales engineers, and so on. Under one methodology, your team will know exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and with whom.” — Dave Mattson, CEO and President of Sandler Training

This will be fun if you’re a VP Sales at an org that’s placed the responsibility on you to decide, for the first time, how to codify and roll out a methodology across an organization.

It will not be so fun, if you’re a VP Sales in a larger org, that’s already chosen a methodology that absolutely sucks, and you’re trying to invoke massive change across an org.

But.. change management is a topic for another day.

So let’s pretend you’re in scenario #1.

Where do you start?

What do you pick?

Well, we know that a sales methodology is simply a documented sales process, that you can teach, train and standardize across your organization.

The answer seems obvious… pick the best one.

Not so simple.

Let’s review the options.

All methodologies are generally broken down into three camps.

• Transactional — Solving a buyers problem, presented by buyer.

• Consultative — Buyers don’t fully understand the problem. It’s understood with the help of the seller.

• Provocative — The seller makes the buyer see they had a problem, they weren’t even aware of.

Those three camps generally spawn the wide array of sales methodologies we all know and love (and hate).

MEDDIC, N.E.A.T, SPIN, SNAP, Challenger, Sandler, Target Account, Value Selling and many more.

If you want to dive deeper into any of these, go here, or here or here or here or here. “

But that doesn’t really answer the overarching question, “which one should I pick”.

The answer is… whatever works.

No.

Really.

But here me out…

This is how you’ll get the methodology to “work”.

• Start with why. No.. not just because Simon Sinek. Really understand what you need to achieve (customer, workforce, target profiles, personas etc).

• Map out the deployment strategy. You can’t set it and forget it.

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. You are not smarter than everyone else.

• Get stakeholder buy-in. If you don’t have buy in from the CEO, marketing, sales leaders and most importantly, your sales team. Every single strategy will fail. Over communicate your rational, plan and support for the methodology.

Regardless of what you pick, the number one cause of failed change in an organization, is failing to plan.

Take time in making your decision, and remember.

A good process is implemented again and again and again.

The second you (and your team) stop treating it with the same care and enthusiasm you did when it was new, is the second it stops working.