Science or Art

What drives a greater degree of sales success? The science of sales where tracking activities versus results enables a salesperson to determine what activity levels are required to achieve their goals. Or the art of sales where a salesperson focuses on skills and competencies to effectively identify customer needs and provide value-added solutions. Of course both are important, but a salesperson can do themselves a favor if they focus on each in the most effective way. 

The science of sales is a concept that not enough sales people take seriously. It is an effective tool for understanding what activities are most important, how many activities need to be completed in order to move the sales process forward, and what size a salesperson's opportunity pipeline needs to be in order to reach their goals. The basis of the science of sales revolves around the pipeline and knowing how many opportunities you have and what stage of the sales process they're in. The science can go as deep as working to understand how many customer attempts and touches a salesperson needs to hit their sales goal in a given period. From that, a salesperson can build ratios that will drive their daily activities. For example, if I know that historically, I have 10 client meetings for every closed sale - and each of those meetings takes 5 telephone discussions and to reach someone it takes 10 phone attempts - it becomes clear exactly what needs to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.  

The ratios will change, and can morph over time as the level of effectiveness, aka the art, improves. But the ratios will always tell a salesperson what they need to action in order to reach success.  

So the moral is, you need to focus on the art and the science, and if you don't have the science figured out you're likely having a difficult time determining what you need to do to succeed in sales. A salesperson without an understanding of the science of their sales process is like spending the day in Disney World without a map. You know what rides and exhibits you want to see but you'll waste a lot of time wandering around trying to figure out exactly where you need to go.