What Are The 6 Critical Steps To Developing a Successful Sales Strategy? Sales strategies aren’t born from thin air; rather, there are six critical steps to developing a successful sales strategy.  Lance Tyson is an author and speaker who runs his own training company. Tyson group has been ranked by Selling Powers as one of the Top 20 sales organizations in the world. It has been operating for 15 years and invested in Dale Carnegie Training in 2010. They work in the sports entertainment industry and one of their biggest customers is the football team, the Raiders. They coordinate with the sales team to sell premium tickets, sponsorships, suites, and others. They also work with Michael Jordan’s company and several tech companies where they coach, train, and consult with their sales teams.  Lance isn’t just teaching; he is also out there grinding and doing all the sales work that his salespeople are doing.  Six steps to developing a successful sales strategy  Attitude, perseverance, and grit aren’t part of the steps. These things must always be present but let’s think of outcome first. In some cultures, the word relations isn’t great and it’s often overused. We prefer the term rapport. This is one of the three outcomes you need to go after. Partner rapport with credibility. While rapport gives you influence, credibility gives you people' trust. The third is one is showing a level of understanding. These three are the beginning of the steps to developing a successful sales strategy which is the following:  Connect Evaluate Diagnose Prescribe Dialogue Close Connect We talk about connecting with others all the time but the conversation of connecting is different today. You may be trying to deal with a level of preoccupation by the buyer. You have to connect with people via text, email, or voicemail. You then talk to people and build rapport. The fragmented conversations can be broken down and taken to connect step to overcome preoccupation. This will lead to building rapport, credibility, and a  level of understanding.  Evaluate When you go to your doctor’s appointment, one of the first things they do is to evaluate you. The same is true in sales. We evaluate our prospects to determine whether they’re interested or not. Other businesses call this assessment while some refer to it as an opportunity. Whatever you call it, it’s the step where salespeople deal with the inherent objection of disinterest.   Diagnose and Prescribe This is where salespeople make an educated guess. Ask yourself what they need most and do not forget about creating a level of comfort. A lot of salespeople walk in the door and make assumptions based on their grand experience, they then ask a few questions. You need to talk to the clients through their feelings and their thoughts. You need to look at their past, their present, and the future to make a good diagnosis. After the evaluation and diagnosis, you make a prescription.  Dialogue and Close  After getting your prescription, your next step would probably be talking with your doctor and asking questions so as to get a clear understanding of your health problem. In the same manner, after giving your prescription as a salesperson, your next step is to have a dialogue to overcome any form of objection. Ultimately, having every question answered, your next step is to close.  Researcher or salesperson The biggest challenge right now is the confusion that most salespeople are stuck in which happens in the connect step. Inside sales reps are responsible for prospecting. You can’t trust everything that’s written on LinkedIn and you can’t just get somebody without fact-checking what their bio says. This creates a problem for sales reps because they often feel like they don’t have enough information to move forward. Thus, the confusion of whether to spend more time on researching about the prospects or looking for prospects to pitch.  It gets harder because it takes at least six touches to get in contact with a tar