Generally Accepted Selling Principles: Is Your Company GASP-Compliant?

It is an absolute given that your organization needs to be GAAP-compliant. No company ignores Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, at least for long, and without penalty. And although perhaps less obvious, the same is true of Sales. Is your company GASP-compliant? If not, you’re losing potential revenue.

Our many years of consulting experience across a wide cross-section of clients has resulted in us identifying 10 key Generally Accepted Sales Principles. Beginning in this edition, we will introduce them.

Principle 1: a Sales Lexicon

Is your organization a Sales "Tower of Babel"? For example, how many times have you heard your sales force refer to a suspect as a prospect or worse yet, a prospect as a customer?

Many companies fail to maximize sales simply because there is no commonly understood sales vocabulary or common sales definitions. What constitutes a lead? A prospect? A suspect. A call to action? Unless everyone is working from the same definition and understanding, they are literally speaking different languages. And in that "fog of communication", things get lost. And fruitless debates abound.

But the bigger danger lies in wildly unreliable sales forecasts, which nonetheless must form the basis of senior management decision-making. Forecasting is a somewhat inexact science at best, but it becomes positively whimsical when several sales definitions are at play. For any sales forecast to be valid in the eyes of senior management or shareholders, there must be an absolute adherence to the terms used when referencing probability to close.

Everyone involved in the sales effort (and this includes Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Product Development, at minimum) have to be speaking the same language if you want to maximize revenue.

Next Issue, Principle 2: Posted Targets

About the Author:
George Brown is a leading corporate strategist and international authority in sales and marketing, George has thirty years' experience in every aspect of sales management, establishing best sales practices, leading and motivating sales teams, and achieving product positioning and sales training success.

About Salesworks
Based in Vancouver, Canada, SALESWORKS is an internationally established, leading-edge sales process consulting practice with a proven track record in increasing top-line revenue for clients by identifying and exploiting major leverage points and shortfalls in their organization's people, processes, products, and technology.

Our consulting services have helped numerous organizations maximize sales by ensuring that all their resources and business processes are optimally configured to generate maximum revenue. We have consistently delivered solid results for clients in fields as diverse as information technology, distribution, law, accounting, insurance, financial services, health care, and retirement and assisted living.

For more information, please visit our website at http://www.salesworks.com.