As a leader, you've probably learned what we tell our clients: “putting a process in place, IS a process.” It takes persistence, patience, and perseverance to put them in place—and keep them in place. With the advent of agile project management principles, leaders have embraced a principle that continuous improvement is more successful than drastic overhauls and small iterations can be deeply transformative.

This is strikingly true for sales professionals. In our experience, small tweaks to the training role-plays and real-time coaching sustain results across companies and organizations. Things like practicing the "pause" that volleys the conversation-ball back to the prospect, allowing them to share why they think the product/service could be valuable to them, increases their buy-in and retention. Implementing the practice of using a collection of concise value statements instead of the old "features and benefits" layout prepare sales teams to stand confidently on value instead of defaulting to concessions or discounts, resulting in better-fit sales and increased margins.

Since a process is simply a collection of best practices linked together, for Value Based clients, we start with our 33 Best Practices. Our Certification Program evaluates sales professionals on all 33, reaching a level of mastery previously unattained in sales professional development.

You may have heard the saying—and possibly run up against this yourself:

“There’s a lot of talk about best practices,
but few ‘practitioners’ ."

Practitioners are made by building best practice competency through practice. This is true in all of life—an operating room, a boardroom or a classroom. The more one practices the best practices, the more proficient and valuable one becomes to the organization.

We believe the old adage “practice makes perfect” needs to be reintroduced into the culture of sales teams. It’s the multiple repetitions of the same practice that makes for perfect execution—mastery. This is why real-time coaching and role-playing is vital.

Over 60% of sales professionals say they need sales coaching, while 60% of sales team leaders say they don't have the bandwidth to provide it.

That kind of statistic can and should motivate leaders to consider an ally who has “been there, done that” to innovate and implement revenue-increasing sales and marketing processes and tried-and-true best practices.

Ongoing research of best practices—and the sustained practice of them—is critical to an organization maintaining their competitive edge. Continuing to recognize and respect the people that practice and perform the best practices will sustain and retain them.

The cost to find and embed your industry sector’s functional best practices into your organization’s processes and culture is not cheap. It takes time, money and discipline but the return on investment is an organization full of people celebrating sustained results.   

Things like a systematized coaching program or sales certification program has been shown to retain good salespeople, decrease discounting and concessions, and increase margins. If you're looking for an ally, we invite you to consider Value Based.