The best salespeople have developed strong business acumen. In other words, they understand how businesses work, operate and decide. They see the bigger picture. Do you know why business acumen is essential and how you can develop it?
Salespeople with well-developed business acumen can easily detect risks and opportunities and make better decisions that lead to a positive outcome.
The developed level of business acumen will predict sales success. The more knowledge on businesses, the better-equipped salespeople are in customer meetings, and the better their results will be. But how to develop it?
How to develop business acumen
Today, more than ever before, customers expect that salespeople are trusted advisors. As a result, salespeople need to understand exactly what’s going in their customer’s business and how to challenge their customers to do things better that would benefit their bottom line.
The good news is; business acumen can be taught. But it all starts with a genuine interest in the customer’s business, market, competitors, and business model.
”The good news is; business acumen can be taught.”
CEO of Sales
Some salespeople have a talent to understand businesses quickly. However, it is important to realize that this is more a matter of curiosity than experience.
So, where to start?
Most salespeople that have developed their business acumen did it without even realizing it. They have a genuine interest in understanding business situations.
There are a few ways you could develop business acumen too. We describe them below.
Develop business acumen by reading and listening
The best information on how businesses work, operate and decide is online available. Start to read articles on websites like Harvard Business Review (HBR), INC, Entrepreneur, Forbes and Business Insider. There are also tons of free podcasts available that will provide you more insights into businesses.
Of course, you can also learn a lot by reading books and papers.
Develop business acumen by experience
The best salespeople have gained so much valuable knowledge during the years that they can recognize patterns and behaviors in business. Subsequently, they apply it in customer meetings. As a result, you will see that many companies have more in common than you would think upfront. A well-developed business acumen enables you to recognize situations, make smarter decisions, and use that information to your own advantage.
Develop business acumen by asking questions
Great salespeople ask the right, open questions to understand the business situation. They also learn from it and repeat it at every customer meeting.
After a while, you see patterns in customer behavior, and you will recognize everyday business situations. If you don’t get an answer, move on to the next question. Don’t be a journalist. Instead, ask questions that make sense, but also understand why you ask these questions.
There are so many questions you could ask. As long as your genuinely interested and the questions make sense to your customer’s industry, business or challenges, there are no wrong questions. The goal should be to learn.
Below a quick enumeration of areas that are important:
- What’s going on in the industry?
- What are the typical challenges within the industry?
- Where there’s a risk of disruption?
- Where there are similarities with companies of the same size
- How the customer is organized (by country, departments, reporting lines)
- Where decisions are being made and who’s involved
- How decisions are being made
- What the top priorities are
- What the main challenges are for their customer
- The company’s overall performance (does it make a profit, is it growing, does it reach its goals, etc.)
Prepare questions in these areas and pick the ones that make sense for you. Please don’t ask them one by one in this order. Instead, use this list as a guide-line and ask follow-up (deep-dive) questions to learn more until you understand the business.
So again – strong business acumen is critical to everyone in sales. You will able to detect risks and opportunities and make better decisions easily. Therefore, we hope this article gives you a better understanding of business acumen. How have you developed yours? Let us know!
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