5 Tips on Leveraging Business and Financial Acumen Skills in the Strategic Selling Process

It’s a Sales Professional’s best dream and worst nightmare come true all in the same phone call.

For months you have been trying to initiate a dialogue with a key sales prospect and then one day, at the most inopportune time, your phone rings and it’s that prospect!

“Hello, I know we haven’t spoken, but I’ve received your calls and emails.  I have an important question.  Can you tell me how your product can really impact our business performance by increasing revenue, reducing our COGS, improving our margins, and positively impacting our working capital?  You have called me 20 times trying to sell me something, so now I have a need. What can you do to help?”

Review of the Book Leaders Eat Last 

As an expert in the world of talent development, not a week goes by without someone – a client, a participant, a colleague, or the person sitting next to me on the transcontinental flight to London – asking me if I have read the new hot leadership book du jour.  I usually only read about 5 good business books a year but regularly pour through the journals, newspapers, magazines, and our own Advantexe research for the material we use to develop our Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling simulations and learning content.

One of the most ridiculous elements they teach you in leadership development programs is to “Celebrate Successes.”  Inevitably this means an “enlightened” business leader will react to the following scenario:

While facilitating the launch of our new Leading Strategic Execution™ business simulation workshop this week, I asked my group of participants a simple question; “If you Google ‘Strategy Execution,’ how many responses do you get?”

I met Bob Schwelm in the early 1980s when the running community in Philadelphia was small and the Broad Street Run fielded about 2,500 runners.  In 2016, more than 40,000 runners packed the local race.  In the early 1990’s Bob took his passion and opened up a store called the Bryn Mawr Running Company and I have been a loyal customer since moving to the suburbs in 1995.  I went to see my old friend last week to pick up a couple of pairs of new running shoes as I typically do 3 times a year for the past 21 years.  We talked about running, races, and commiserated about our slowing times and even slower recovery times from the long training runs.  As I do with most people, I asked Bob “How’s business?”  I always worry about small business owners like Bob - especially retail owners - and am curious to hear how they are doing in this changing world.  After losses like Robinson Luggage and other proud small family-owned retail stores over the past few years, I expected to hear the worst.  I was pleasantly surprised.