Welcome the SMART Sales System™. Today is the first day of the rest of your life and if you are in sales or are a business owner, if you implement this system not only will your sales efforts be more successful, they will actually be easier as well.

In this chapter, we will try to introduce you to the system and provide a little clarity as to the direction that we will be taking you in. And to do that, I will answer three question:

What does SMART stand for?
In what way is this a system?
What can you expect from this?

What does SMART stand for?

If you are a salesperson, you may have a set of different sales tools that you use. You could have any combination of phone, cell phone, email account, CRM, social media accounts, email automation, social media automation, and many others. All of these tools are designed to help you to sell more than you would if you did not use them.

And while I agree that using many of the available sales tools will deliver a positive ROI and worth adding to your mix, my main belief is that most powerful sales tool that you have is what you say when talking with or writing to prospects.

That is why it is our mission to help you to communicate in the clearest and optimum way when prospecting and what our SMART Sales System™ is designed to help you to do. To begin to explain how it does that, let’s start with what SMART stands for – Sales Messaging and Response Tactics.

When we say Sales Messaging, we refer to everything that you say when prospecting. This includes what you say when you call, when you email, leave voicemails, meet during appointments, deliver presentations, write in proposals, etc. Basically everything you say while selling.

Our system and methodology helps you with know what best to say, and in many cases not say, in all of these scenarios. There is not another sales methodology or training program that focuses as much as we do on helping you with what to say. This is one way that we are different from our competition.

Notice how I just pointed out how we are different. That is one aspect of our differentiation and should be part of our sales messaging just like your differentiation should be part of your messaging. And when you identify how you differ from you competition, that should be part of your sales message and something you can mention on calls, in emails, or during meetings. This is one example of how we will help you with Sales Messaging.

The R in SMART stands for Response and it refers to how we will work with you to improve how you respond to objections and questions. If we could only work on one area with you, I would probably recommend for that area to be to improve how you respond to objections as that can have such a big impact on how successful you are as a salesperson. That is an example of what we will do in the Response area and shows you how important of a role it plays in being a SMART salesperson.

The T in SMART stands for Tactics and this is because the sales system provide real tactics tell you to what to do, and not do, when selling and talking to sales prospects. You may see the word “Tactics” and not think that is not that special, or maybe that we were just trying to think of something that would be used for the T in the SMART acronym. But actually, this part of the sales system is very important because it is these very clear and easy to implement tactics that make the system something that you can adopt regardless of your personality and experience.

In what way is this a system?

You are going to see us use the word “system” a lot in this book. The reason why we use the word system is because this is something that you can completely implement and adopt. I believe this is very important because I have personally sat through very interesting and powerful sales training programs and presentations and have thought “that was really great”. But then when I get back to my desk after the training, I don’t know how to implement or use any of the the stuff that was discussed.

From my own experiencing going through many training programs, watching videos online, and reading books, I think there are three reasons why a lot sales training materials are difficult to adopt and implement.

All Fluff

The Nike Just Go Do It type of training is material that might be entertaining, motivating, and inspiring in the way that it tells you to work hard and that you can do anything you put you mind to. This is something that we need to hear from time-to-time and it makes you feel good. But when you get back to the office, you might be pumped up and ready to work harder but you don’t know what to do or change in order to improve your sales results, other than work harder and that might wear off over time.

Too Complex

On the other extreme, there are some training programs that provide some impressive advice but the programs and suggestions are too complicated to realistically adopt. For example, one book that I read had a nine square matrix that they recommend you fill out with prospects in appointments. Without going into detail on the matrix, I will just say that I like the logic behind what they are saying to do but to really incorporate their process into a meeting is a bit difficult and that can decrease the odds of fully adopting the training program.

Tied to a Personality

Another thing that I believe is that there are some sales trainers that were very successful salespeople and now they are trying to train others. And that is great but with some people, what made them a great salesperson is tied a lot to their personality. For example, maybe their use of humor, charisma, and persuasiveness led them to being successful and now they are trying to get other people to replicate what they did as a salesperson.

On paper, that all would be a pretty good plan but the problem is that it is tough to copy someone’s personality because we all have our own personality and I believe it is best to be who you are and not try to act like someone else. Not only are you less likely to be successful as someone else when trying to act like them, it is actually hard to do from an adoption and implementation standpoint.

When you have a sales training programs that falls into one of those categories, it can be difficult to implement and this makes it less of a system. Meaning that you get exposed to some new information and advice but you really don’t have a way to incorporate it into your sales efforts and you don’t really end up changing much. This greatly reduces the ROI for the time and money that might spend on these training programs and materials.

We solve that issues and are different from those sales training programs in three main ways.

We Will Tell You What to Do

With us, you do not have to worry about getting back to your desk and not know what to do as we will tell you exactly what to do in all of the common situations you will find yourself in during the sales process. For example, when prospecting you will find yourself in situations where you are sending an email, making a call, talking to a gatekeeper, facing an objection, or hosting a meeting. Our methodology will tell you what to do, and not do, in these situations.

Not only does our methodology teach you what to do and say in common situations, but we also help you to build sales tools that will help you to remember what to do. For example, our methodology will teach you how to cold call, but we will also teach you how to build a cold call script that you can use as a guide when cold calling, so that you can remember the steps we recommend that you do when cold calling.