Triangle REVenue Exchange Recap: "Top Sales Commandments"

​Thanks to the Triangle REVenue Exchange event we had the opportunity to learn from the Chief Revenue Officer of ChannelAdvisor, Paul Forte. Paul shared his "Top Sales Commandments" about how to lay the foundation for sales excellence. A wonderful event graciously hosted at the ChannelAdvisor HQ in Morrisville, NC.
Many great wisdom points were shared on sales success, but here were top three points I noted to help give you a taste!

1. With your sales endeavors remember the "Stockdale Paradox". This perspective is comes from Admiral John Stockdale, VP for Ross Perot, per his prisoner of war experience and wisdom gained. Two characteristics of the "Stockdale Paradox" is:

• Face the brutal facts about your current reality. Don't try to excuse anything or rationalize anything away. Face the facts and deal with the truth head on.
• Have faith you will prevail in the end. Recognize any challenge as defining moment of opportunity to emerge bigger, better, and stronger.

When running your business and conducting sales be brutally honest with your situation and deal with the hard cold facts to address the reality of your situation. Have faith with the right efforts, product, and process you will prevail. Then focus on the execution.
2. The most important two attributes of a successful sales professional is like-ability and trust. At the end of the day, people ultimately buy from people they like and trust. Part of the sales craft is simply being a good friend and making good friends.
3. When Paul was asked to distill his most successful sales attributes in one acronym it was FLARE!

• F= Focus on the Fundamentals of good sales process. Know your craft, know how to handle objections, how to message, and know how to conduct yourself in meetings. Know the blocking and tackling of sales well.
• L=Listen. Listen more to your customers. Talk less. The old sales adage goes, "You can't listen your way out of a sale, but you can sure talk your way out of many sales". Ask open ended questions. Listen!
• A= Activity. Make more calls. Reach out more. Put in the action that leads to more sales. Fill your pipe line.
• R= Relationships. Be mindful of building relationships. Be like-able. Be trustworthy.
• E= Effort. Sales is all about hard work. Grind it out. Put in the time!

Some other great sales tips were:

• Get comfortable outside your comfort zone
• Selling is one thing, selling on time is another
• Messaging – its not WHAT you say, but HOW you say it

Overall an epic sales training event. Thank you Vince Beese and Triangle Revenue Exchange for putting on a great networking and educational evening. Big thanks to Paul Forte for world class teaching! Look forward to the next event!
About Triangle REVenue Exchange(TRE): TRE is a forum for revenue generating leaders who are responsible for driving growth at their organizations. The mission of TRE is to empower learning, sharing and mentoring for the revenue generating community. 

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