Back in the day when I was a young sales pup it was all about relationship selling. Anyone with the personality to create strong relationships quickly would get the sale more often than not. We sold on instinct, our gut, and sense of smell, fancy footwork, relationships and hope to make our numbers.

Today, sales professionals are required to effectively use analytical skills; think “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis. We need the tools to show the success of value propositions, ROI proof, integrated apps and more. Today, a 30% increase in sales productivity requires a formal sales process and analytical tools.

With less than 55 selling days left to make our 4^th quarter sales targets my suggestions are to put away your gut and sense of smell and rely on your professional skills, careful planning, detailed analysis and step-by-step account plans to get to the sales presentation and make it count. Really make it count and close the sale.

Getting to the sales presentation is hard, really hard, so when you finally get there make sure you use your interactive sales tools to “show” how your products and solutions make real business sense.