One fundamental belief I encounter with sales people across industries is that selling is all about winning. Who wouldn’t like to win. In life, in business and in sales. Getting ahead is all about winning, right?

I think the truth is a bit more complex than just winning. I understand losing hurts, believe me I’ve been there many times. But to perceive sales and selling purely as winning or losing seems very narrow point of view to me.

Long gone are the days of “John Wayne” type of sales people who performed heroic effort to win business. “John Wayne” selected the customers himself, did the work and eventually won the business with charisma and argumentation and emerged from the battlefield as a winner.

Currently (and even more in the future) sales people cannot force potential customers to purchase offerings they don’t need.

During any sales cycle there is always the discussion of a) what the customer wants and b) what the customer needs. Customers are in the different stages of their buying cycles and even different individuals join the purchase decision at different point in time. They need to be educated and they need to establish internal alignment between the individuals participating the buying process before they are able to decide. Sales people can facilitate this process to some extent. But once the conversation around wants vs. needs has been finalised, there is nothing one sales people can do if the fit between the customers requirements and the value provided by the offering is not there. There is no room for “John Wayne” anymore. Therefore it might make sense to look into what selling is all about.

To me, sales and selling is about finding opportunities that are mutually beneficial. Both the provider as well as the customer has to win. Both need to be able to extract value from the transaction. Selling is a process of finding mutually beneficial opportunities. Therefore the objective in selling should not be solely on winning but on finding opportunities that are opportunities for both the provider and the customer.

Selling is a collaborative process between the provider and the customer. Sales people can (and they should) challenge their customers objectives with industry insights and benchmark information. But sales people also need to listen to the feedback from the customer. Sales process is a dialogue, collaboration and exchange of value, objectives, priorities and best practices between the buyer and the seller. At any point of this conversation either party might need to say “This is not for me, I cannot deliver on these requirements”. And that should be ok.

If this is true, this will have huge impact on how you set up your sales system and incentives.

Sales system (sales process, management model, roles and responsibilities, KPI’s, skills, capabilities) should be geared to quickly generate potential sales opportunities, select (or qualify) the ones with high probability of mutual benefits and drive those opportunities forward effectively. To get your sales system in shape, you’ll need tools and techniques such as customer segmentation, lead generation, opportunity qualification, etc.

Early part of the sales process (or marketing process, digital sales or online outreach) should focus on generating dialogue and engaging with right kind of customers (with low costs). The middle part of the process should focus on prioritisation, selection and qualification (improve Return on Sales). Only the last part of the sales process is about driving opportunities forward effectively (focus on Flow). Selling and growing your business is a team effort.

If you wish to improve the performance if single player in the orchestra, you’ll need sales training. If you want to improve the performance of the whole sales system, you’ll need completely different tool-set. Application of Lean thinking in sales is very robust and practical tool-set.

But first, you’ll need to decide if you believe in “John Wayne” or team work and collaboration. Not only between the sales person and the customer but also collaboration between different people at the provider’s organisation. I know this is not an easy question.