Variety may give spice, but success?

Variety is the spice of life. It’s a phrase we hear often and it may well be true, but is it the secret to success? I’m not sure that any athlete, any musician, any business leader who’s had incredible success ever puts it down to variety. I think it’s more likely they put it down to the relentless pursuit of excellence and that’s usually achieved through consistent repetition of habits again and again and again.

So what’s the link to sales here? Well, when training salespeople, I often hear them explaining their inconsistencies as something that keeps them interested: "Well, I’m mixing it up. I like to try new things." but I think we’re kidding themselves that variety adds anything useful.

If trying new things is more important to you than being the best you can be, then carry on, enjoy the variety and mix it up. However, if your aim is to be the best in your role, I’d recommend that you ditch variety, and focus on structured sales processes and structured sales conversations.

Let’s take outbound sales calls as an example. The phone is answered by a potential client. You have 10, 15 maybe 20 seconds to give them a reason to speak to you. Once you’ve done that, you want to understand them and their needs; you do that by asking questions. Within those questions are certain key points that you want to find out and, whilst their answers may take you into deeper questions, there are main questions that are going to be asked every single time.

Once you’ve understood their needs, you move into the next phase which is selling your product or service to match those needs; you’re fulfilling their requirements by offering your products and services in a compelling way (I hope!). And then, by the end, you’re going to agree some next steps to move things forward. A similar structure applies to most sales meetings and presentations though they can be amended a little (while still keeping a core structure).

By focusing on structure rather than variety, you’ll be more consistently successful. Contrary to what some people think about structure, it doesn’t inhibit you. It actually gives you freedom to do the most important thing in sales and that’s to listen to your clients. So my recommendation, my tip for you is to spice up your personal life with variety, but use structure to be consistently successful in sales.