PEO Sales Effectiveness
Be proud to be in sales…
Recently, I attended a client’s annual sales conference. The morning of Day 1, I looked across the room with roughly 100 people representing multiple functions in sales, service, marketing, finance, etc. within the organization. I was excited to be one of the first presenters of the event, and being that I was a new face to the majority of the room, I wanted to develop credibility. In my opening remarks, I stated “I am an accountant by trait and not sales”. Throughout the day I heard several others open with similar commentary before delivering their content.
Why are we ashamed to say we are in sales?
Sales is the most rewarding role in an organization!
Sales gets to –
- meet new business leaders every day
- listen to the organization’s challenges and opportunities
- design solutions and services to meet business objectives
- build diverse delivery teams
- set expectations
- quantify the ROI
I started my “real” sales career in the PEO industry. Hats off to the industry that continues to grow in a very complex sales process. Great PEO sales forces have to listen and align a very complex and comprehensive solution that touches almost every aspect of a business. In most cases, organizations have to serve two, three, or four long-standing business relationships in order to truly leverage everything a PEO has to offer. The PEO industry continues to be the national leader in pure organic growth due to bringing small businesses innovation, eliminating the complex regulatory environment, and the ability to compete for talent. While all of these factors have attributed to accelerating growth in the PEO industry, the sales force is responsible for messaging the PEO value propositions and making it easy for businesses to Say Yes.