Jonathan Farrington expands on the meaning & importance of the Sales Success Pyramid
I recently reported on renown Sales Strategist and Business Coach, Jonathan Farrington’s Sales Webinar Teleclass on How to Become A Sales Superstar in 2010. Here he expands on why he constructed the Sales Success Pyramid in the way that he did.
I’m honored to have a man of Jonathan Farrington’s stature write this guest post on The Magnetic Entrepreneur weblog.
Enjoy, and take notes!
~ TB
This post is in response to a comment that was left regarding my recent webinar – “How to Become a Sales Superstar in 2010”
The question was:
“Why does Jonathan put knowledge at the very top of the pyramid? Can you touch on that? What knowledge is he defining, specifically?
Knowledge of the product/service, or something else?”
I am delighted to be able to offer this expanded response.
I first began to recognise the need to be able to benchmark sales performance more objectively and more rigorously over twenty five years ago: The motivation to do this was strong because I knew I was wasting thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on sales skills training programmes which were not providing me with a proper return on my considerable investment. But I needed to prove my theory because without an accurate analysis of my requirements, I would continue to abdicate that responsibility to the training providers, most of whom had only their own interests at heart.
So with this quote from Drucker, “The most effective way to manage change is to create it” firmly in my mind, I set about my task; a task that became a journey, which began in 1981 and is still ongoing.
By taking an analytical approach, I arrived at the following equation:
Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success.
My initial reasoning was this: Attitude is fundamental to any achievement because individuals with the right attitude are far more likely to embrace the essential Skills, recognise the control that Process brings and have the desire to continually expand their Knowledge.
Skills are the ‘tools of the trade’ and have to be developed on an ongoing basis. They also need to be specific, because too much time can be wasted over-burdening employees with inappropriate and irrelevant skills without any identifiable plan for their future requirements.
Process brings organisation, efficiency and control, both for the individual and for management. Effective process provides objective analysis and indicators which can be benchmarked and accurately measured.
Then there is of course a need to build in knowledge and that must include knowledge of products, industry, market sectors, competitors, business, own company and last but not least, self!
So you see, at the bottom of my pyramid, is the foundation – attitude.
But never think that you can remove any one of these four factors from the equation – you do so at your peril. Each is equally important if you are to achieve sustainable success.
Jonathan Farrington is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The jf Corporation, and Senior Partner at The JF Consultancy – based in London and Paris.
You can also catch his hugely popular daily blog at The JF Blogit – http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk
