At ELAvate, we believe salespeople are leaders. Ethical salespeople lead customers to mutually beneficial decisions, based on trust, to how to move the sale forward. In Asia, no “guanxi,” no sale. Guanxi is the Mandarin word for “trusting relationship” as is “hubungan” for Indonesian/Malay.
We have adapted select Dr. John Maxwell’s Irrefutable Laws of Leadership to the Asian selling environment and supplemented these with laws from Todd Duncan’s book “High Trust Selling.”

The end of the 1st quarter! How are you doing as a sales manager? Remember those commitments, goals, changes you set out for 2025? Progressing, struggling or stalling? Let’s walk through a checklist of 20 +1 questions that you might answer with a ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Not Sure.’ Reviewing your answers can allow you to congratulate yourself, make 2nd quarter changes, or give you a wake-up call to improve your sales leadership or team performance.

Some of our customers expect that when they send their salespeople to our ELAvate Sales Training they immediately become super salespeople after a two day workshop. Not true!

Selling Skill Improvement is not a “Microwave” activity, but rather a consistent “Crock Pot” process of a selling skills workshop followed by Effective Sales manager Coaching with Measurable Reinforcement Activities.

Insights from Michael Griffin

Gartner Consulting recently published an article under the title “Product Positioning 101” for tech companies. I found the essence of this treatise can be applied to many B2B sales and marketing across many industries. You can download the web link for their article at the end of this blog. Before you rush and scroll to link, read the insights I have on how the “product positioning framework” can be employed by your company to magnify marketing and drive sales of your key products or solutions. At ELAvate, we have been employing the key points of the product positioning framework in our “Selling Against the Competition” workshop for many years!

Dr. Shiran has outlined the seven principles here. Want to know what truly separates exceptional B2B sales performers from average ones? A ground breaking analysis of 139 studies1 across four decades has uncovered the scientific answer. Let’s see how these principles link to excellent sales performance.

ELAvate’s Note: What is interesting here is these principles were confirmed many times by our former principal, AchieveGlobal, Inc, since the 1980’s. All Seven Principles have been built into our ELAvate Consultative Selling Skills (CSS) workshop with Asian focus and examples!

I believe all salespeople can be leaders who lead customers and the company they work for to Win3 decisions for mutual success – a win for their customer, a win for their company, and a win for themselves. This is done by demonstrating integrity, selling and communication skills with expert solution knowledge. Let’s combine the terms salesperson, leader, and servant: “Servant Sales Leader – are you?”

This sales blog is a quick read with a very powerful tool to grow your salespeople in 2025. Sales managers that actively support and guide their salespeople’s growth usually lead more successful, more competitive sales teams. In January, set individual meetings with each of your salespeople to discuss the development needs and action plans they need to be more successful in 2025. Remember, their growth and success will be your success as their sales manager.

I promised in my last ELAvate Sales Blog to give you a planning worksheet to refocus you on a more wholesome life in 2025. This worksheet I call “Successful Leaders Play Lego in 2025.” Rather than a life of balancing your career against other areas of your life, you can build a more wholesome life with the “Lego life bricks” found on our attached worksheet. I believe a life of significance is built on practically integrating the important aspects (the Lego bricks) of your life

What would be the one word that describes your 2024? For me it is “Thrive” rather than “Strive”. I learned from teaching Vistage CEO’s the seven principles of Antifragile by Nassim Taleb that I can and will thrive through change and chaos, to serve my customers better, maintain healthy relationships by being more patient and less critical, and leave margin in my daily life.

Have you ever pruned a tree in your yard? A few years ago, one of my favourite bloggers, Joyce Meyer, was helping her husband prune one of their trees. There were times when her husband cut the branches back so far that she said to him, “There is nothing left. You have totally destroyed our tree!” But he said, “You just watch and see.” And sure enough, before long the pruned tree was much better looking than it was before.

Recent trends of sales training have emphasized “Sales Enablement.” This approach focuses the salesperson on closing the sale above the central role of serving the customer. It seems that “sales enablement” has it backwards. I believe professional and ethical salespeople should focus on collaborating and serving customers for a Win3 outcome: a win for the customer, a win for salesperson, and a win for the salesperson’s organization.

An interesting statistic. You, as me, may be struggling with how to best adapt AI into our sales processes and CRM yet not demotivate our salespeople with more admin work. I did some research and have come up with some helpful insights on how you as a sales leader might start to leverage AI for sales productivity. Let’s take a look at areas where AI can boost salespeople productivity by employing AI and CRM together that can assist getting your salespeople more time in the field to meet customers.

‘Whether the astronaut or the surgeon, both do continuous simulations to practice their skills and processes for a successful space mission or a successful surgery. In the B2B sales arena, we call these simulations “role plays.” Research shows that only 20% of sales organizations practice role plays on a consistent basis or as part of their training program (Janek).

We have started a ELAvate Sales Success Podcast with our senior consultant Abhilash Sivaramam and the podcast we recorded today discussed the evolution of the Asian B2B customer and the impact it has on your salespeople’s productivity. This discussion with Abhi motivated me to scour the web and AI platforms to garner significant research on how B2B sales environment is changing across the globe. Let’s look at what I found and a solutions for each to improve your sales team success

How well you inspire trust with your B2B customers can be your competitive advantage or kill the sale. Effectively building trust leads to healthy long term customer relationships that is a win for both you and your customer. With customers limiting their “exposure” to salespeople, quickly establishing trust is a must to move the sales process forward.  Dale Carnegie research states 81% of customers are more likely to buy again from a salesperson they trust.

ELAvate has partnered with Senior Consultant Abhilash Sivaraman and CEO Michael Griffin to launch a bi-weekly podcast series, "Selling in Asia." This lively visual and audio discussion will focus on sales success for salespeople and managers, drawing on Abhilash's 20+ years of global sales experience and Michael's 30+ years in sales productivity consulting in Asia. This series complements our existing Sales e-zines and blogs.

Most sales training focuses on skill and process and glosses over attitude and motivation. I have experienced the power of Jeffrey Gitomer sales books and sales training by the unique way he creates sales success by synergizing selling skills, process, attitude and will power to succeed. Jeffrey has inspired me for over 15 years to excel in selling and sales training to exceed my client expectations in delivering world class sales that gets real ROI.

In my previous blog on “Sales Plasticity” I highlighted how ability & adaptability lead to agility. The “high octane” fuel for having super sales agility is “resilience.” I learned this in the mid-80s in Malaysia as a road race cyclist under the guidance of the National Cycling Coach Ng Joo Ngan. He is a master coach who motivates his cyclists to win races with agility & resilience. Over the past 40 years as National Coach, he has coached Malaysian cyclists to 59 gold medals in international events.

Plasticity in sales involves the Four A’s of attitude, ability, adapting, and agility. How might you increase your plasticity in selling to be more successful and create win-win solutions for you and your customers? I believe it first begins with consistency of attitude to learn and grow in the ability to practice and refine your core selling skills and processes that you master to sell and exceed customer expectations.

Mike’s Note: Rain Group has produced some very interesting research on the perception gaps found between salespeople and their customers. The research should cause every sales manager to investigate how big are the perception gaps between their customers and salespeople! I have summarized the key findings here and I make suggestions on how you can close these sales competency gaps with your sales people.