Salesteam Intent

I blogged in late 2010 on the 8 word mission. I’m a fan of this kind of thinking and can pretty closely gauge a salesteam’s true direction by what their stated headline mantra is. That is, where they have such a device in play.

I should re-iterate that I believe such a dictum to be an integral building block in any sales process.

I asked a couple of sales leaders in one firm a while back to brainstorm their eight word mission.

expert [3-word description of service provided] in [geography] and in our chosen sectors

We chuckled at how this is actually eleven words. Not eight. They claimed that ‘ands’ and ‘ins’ don’t really count. It occurred to me later that this is out by 37½%. I wonder, is this a typical selling margin for error?!

This was only a deliberately short exercise in this case, yet we did spend a bit more time on analysis.

These guiding statements are meant to both enthuse prospects and sellers alike. I naturally won’t go into intimate details to protect the confidentiality of the people concerned. Suffice to say that the construction itself can be modified to focus more on the problem solved for clients rather than state the product supplied, and the first word ‘expert’ can be drilled into so that precisely how this expertise manifests itself in the eyes of clients comes out instead.

Have you got an eight word sales mission published yet?