It’s funny what you learn as you travel.
I was recently on vacation in Scandinavia. I started in Copenhagen in Denmark and spent a few days cycling around that city before heading to Oslo in Norway. On the way I stopped off in Gothenburg in Sweden where I slept in a Viking ship, before continuing on to Norway.
As we traveled north the days get longer. I awoke one morning to the sun streaming through the hotel windows at 4:24am and it was still bright at 11pm in the evening. Everything is brighter and lighter. Blonde ladies called Ingrid or Ulrika walk regally down Karl Johan’s Gate in Oslo hand-in-hand with Sven or Per, and I marveled at the richness and diversity to be found in European culture, just a few hours away from where I live in Ireland.
But it’s someone called Harald Bluetooth that I thought you might find particularly interesting.
Harald was the King of Denmark between 940 and 985 AD. When Harald’s sister was widowed after the death of the Norwegian king Erik Blood Axe – I just love that name – she came to Denmark to seek Harald’s help in securing control of Norway. Harald took the opportunity to seize control and established a common set of trading rules between previously warring tribes. He used these rules to create greater communication, and during his rule, Denmark and Norway were united.
When Ericsson invented Bluetooth, the technology to allow greater communication between people and devices, and devices with each other, they looked to history to find a suitable name. Considering this technology as a standard set of rules and a communications enabler, they selected Bluetooth after the aforementioned King of Denmark.
They even used Harold’s initial H and B as the symbol to represent Bluetooth by combining the Viking letters for H and B to form that now familiar symbol.
The key thing to Harold Bluetooth’s success was his ability to create standard rules and a system that everyone could understand.
So it is with business today.
When looking to accelerate velocity in business a quick path to progress is a common set of rules, standards or processes that everyone can follow. That way everyone is on the same page and marching – or marauding in the case of the Vikings – to the same rhythm.
This need for a common approach is perhaps more pertinent in sales now than it has ever been. And as I thought about Harald Bluetooth I remembered that one of the most popular resources on our website has consistently been the 12 Elements of Great Sales Process – a short book that outlines how you can achieve greater communication and a standard set of trading rules across all of the sales team.
You can download that ebook here; but for your convenience I have listed below the 12 elements that we found to be most effective in getting everyone on the same page to enable communication and to accelerate sales growth.
- Make it repeatable
- Customize to the Buying Cycle
- Provide Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage
- Base it on Smart Industry Standard Sales Process Templates
- Allow for many Simple and Complex Processes
- Make sure you can benchmark
- Provide Team Visibility for the Sales Manager
- Integrate with your CRM
- Link it to Sales Forecasts
- Ensure it is Motivational and Visual
- Make it Social and Collaborative
- Make it available on the phone and in the Cloud
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Donal Daly is Executive Chairman of Altify having founded the company in 2005. He is author of numerous books and ebooks including the Amazon #1 Best-sellers Account Planning in Salesforce and Tomorrow | Today: How AI Impacts How We Work, Live, and Think. Altify is Donal’s fifth global business enterprise.