In B2B Sales, Making Mistakes Fast Is a Key to Shortening Sales Cycles

In B2B sales, Reps yearn to close more sales more quickly to counter industry trends pushing in the opposite direction. They yearn for the craftsmanship of sales superstars.

In any craft, making mistakes is key to honing craftsmanship. True craftsman know the value of making mistakes. They learn, from experience, how to perfect the practices they practice.

This notion is challenging in sales. There's an expectation of quickly performing that's out of whack with the ten years practice it takes in any craft to gain the skills of a craftsman. Most Reps only last a few years in the sales profession.

One of the keys to helping Reps endure their time-bounded pressures to perform while still learning and honing their craft is shrinking the time it takes for them to detect + fix mistakes they're making.

This helps them become 'sales innovators'. As with innovators in any craft, they become curious. Learning-oriented. Confident that if something's wrong they can fix it. As Clayton Christenson notes here:



As the time shrinks in which Reps do these things and gain these traits, so, too, does the time it takes for Reps to have impact. Results accrue faster. Cycles shrink, as happened in this example from the on-boarding of a new Sales hire.

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