by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Having a compelling Vision is crucial, although it requires astute positioning and pathfinding to capitalize on that vision.”

While Susan started pulling her Strategist team together, Alex nudged her simultaneously toward the initial marketing of SalesSMART Advisors. Knowing that there are likely willing clients out there, would go a long way toward drawing any probable Strategists fully into her orbit. Consequently, she finalized some preliminary, captivating marketing materials before making her first sales call. Quite naturally she intended to utilize the SMART sales approach with her package.

Her preliminary business vision included securing 6-9 clients of her own during the first three months of operation. Her package would include providing sales “newbies” with an initial 3 hour one-on-one session, plus six ‘up-to’ 1½ hour phone sessions during their first three months to introduce them to the SMART Selling appr-oach, as above.  She would require them to complete her on-line Mercury SMART Sales survey in advance.

Additionally, she would conduct an initial introductory briefing with each “newbie’s” sales leader, as well as a debriefing session afterward to seamlessly hand “coachees” over to their ongoing mentor. She anticipated accruing $27,000 in fees to cover six different “newbies” during that three month period. She suspected that any particularly competent SalesSMART advisors hired would likely double that number per month, once up to speed. It wasn’t long before she secured her first client. Have you noticed that there’s been no discussion about outside funding so far, since it’s often not necessary with the right strategy and people component?

Coupled with this progress, Susan pulled her initial five Strategists together at her home one Saturday morning, since they all had full-time positions. This allowed her to walk them through her preliminary first year vision, which included starting to recruit and onboard SalesSMART advisors within their venture’s first three months. After some valuable team discussions, they came to a consensus view. Based upon her regular chats with Alex, she also shared the need to secure an Expansionist – the sixth team Strategist – to help define their way forward. This included likely vital compabilities – competences and capabilities – that expansionists should possess to succeed. With that briefing, it gained their commitment to help search for this particular expert.

Within a couple of weeks, they had come up with résumés for three strong candidates. Susan agreed to meet with these as soon as possible, although she cut that list to two after careful review with Alex. So she now called another Saturday morning session for her Strategist team to meet the two finalists. After their interviews, they quickly came to a consensus view on one candidate in particular – named Sarah. She had a remarkably successful marketing and entrepreneurial background, which looked most promising. Sarah equally liked what she saw of Susan’s team members so far; along with her SalesSMART’s preliminary future vision.

A couple of Saturdays later, Susan met her final team of six for lunch, by which time Sarah had also signed a confidentiality agreement. Susan was now able to share her successes of acquiring new clients – five so far – as well as more detail on the power of SalesSMART’S orientation program. She related that, for any potential client sales leaders who were somewhat in doubt about her SMART Sales approach, she took them through a snapshot review of a “newbie’s” initial session; she also allowed them to participate in her Mercury online sales survey. It often seemed to do the trick of convincing them to move ahead. Does this make sense to you?

Susan’s coverage of her activities pretty much convinced her aspiring team of the program’s value and sealed its desire to forge ahead. With this impetus, she requested that they meet again in two week’s time in order to finalize a business vision for the first twelve months. After some preliminary questions and discussion about what to expect, they all plunged into a well deserved lunch. They also agreed to carefully review Susan’s current notes and thoughts that she had put together on her proposed “vision” during the interim.

Alex bore witness to this briefing and positioning session and was delighted with Susan’s approach. They agreed to meet again during the interim to help her prepare for a separate, conjoining Pathfinding session, so as to fully complete Phase 2. They would be much better positioned to do this now they had a full team.