“SKILL AND WILL”: THE DYNAMIC DUO OF SALES SUCCESS

“Skill and Will” are the dynamic duo of sales success. They provide an easily remembered phrase to refer to the factors that lead to top performance in sales.

Skill is your competence. It is the knowledge of what to do and your effectiveness in being able to put that knowledge into productive and consistent action.

Skills can be learned, observed, and easily evaluated from the outside. It’s what most of this book has focused on—skills in collaborative WIIFT conversations adjusted for Tribal Types.

Skill is important, yet equally important is the Will to perform.

Will is the confidence and drive to take action. Will is why you do what you do—it’s internally based and is invisible to the outside world.

In most sales teams, I find that the seller who knows the most is often not the seller who sells the most. The most successful sellers are those who have the required knowledge and take the necessary actions. They:

• Prospect.

• Prepare for conversations and overall strategy.

• Use a consistent and collaborative conversation approach.

• Build relationships in and outside their company.

• Make contact each day with prospective buyers.

• Ask for decisions.

• Follow up.

• Continue to learn.

The commitment to these actions and the consistency in taking them is impacted more by the Will factor than the Skill factor. The Will factor is the amplifier of sales skills. Take two sellers with the same Skill and I can accurately predict that the one with a stronger Will factor is the better performer.

The Will factor’s impact can be observed in sports by looking at Wisconsin’s much beloved football team, the Green Bay Packers. In January 2012 they had all the Skill they needed to reach the Super Bowl for a second straight year, but when they walked onto the field of a playoff game, I noticed that their Will seemed lacking. Their energy was low, they were tentative, and they didn’t appear to be fired up. Within the first few minutes I said, “They aren’t going to win this one.” And they didn’t. Why was their Will lower that day? I don’t know, but I know I could feel it in their actions and energy; they weren’t “in the zone” that day.