The three i’s of team coaching and consulting sales presence

People buy from people.

No matter how strong your strategic value proposition, key buying decisions are still powerfully affected by personal relationships. You can contribute to these relationships by being conscious and intentional about the way you show up, energetically and somatically. Three important factors are your intent, systemic impact and the implicit invitation you carry with you.

Intention in team coaching and consulting sales presence

Only you can shape your intent. By “intent” I mean the essence of your energetic approach to prospective clients. It comes with you and it can be the main thing people notice about you. This applies whether you build a long and conscious marketing and sales funnel to engage with them, or you happen to meet them at an apparently random event. Even though many popular references to Albert Mehrabian’s research claiming that “93% of communication is non-verbal” are based on a misquote, it remains true that your underlying energy and presence during conversations (whether in person or online) accounts for about half of your impact.

When you get into a conversation with a prospective client, what is the core intent you bring, and how can you best communicate it beyond your words? Of course you have some kind of sales intent, but is that all? How much do you really want to learn about your client and their business? What wider purpose motivates you to engage with how they deliver value to their clients or stakeholders. Why are you interested in how the people dimension affects their business? How much do you just want them to believe that people and relationships are the golden key to success?

Impact of your sales presence

The impact you have when meeting prospective clients is much less under your own control. Your systemic awareness can help you in two ways.

Firstly, a systemic lens can help you not to take your impact so personally. This applies whether things go well or badly. Systemic factors affect how we are seen and heard. While these systemic factors may well be unfair, it’s often not as personal as it feels. Knowing this can help us reclaim agency when our impact is diminished by these factors. It also helps us find humility if these systemic factors boost our impact.

Secondly, systemic awareness enables you to track your impact without judgement. Just notice the signals from all over the prospective client organization about how you and your offers are landing. It is useful information. Processing it can help you decide if you want to do business with the organization, and to be more effective if the relationship develops further.

Invitation: the intangibles in your sales presence

Why I add the term invitation to the three i’s of your sales presence is difficult to write down. Where I am pointing is towards the underlying promise or invitation that filters into your communication, or bubbles up in the mind of the person you’re engaging with.

Whether they are verbalizing this or not, some part of them is processing questions like “can this person really help us?” or “will my team think it’s worth the time to engage with this person?” You can’t really gauge your impact without an external observer. I’ve made a point of interviewing some of my clients about their perceptions of this.

A safe space to explore your sales presence

In the next Wider Value advanced business development seminar in November we will explore these subtleties of  intent, invitation and impact interactively. We will build a safe and confidential container where you can explore your impact with people who don’t already know you. The meeting will only be open to qualified and registered advanced participants.

Business standing: tailwind or headwind?

As much as you can set your energetic intention, and get help on understanding how your invitation is perceived, there is an external wind that affects every conversation. It’s about your perceived business standing. How does the person you’re talking to rate your relevance to their business? This applies whether their business is for profit, or non-profit or institutional.

Part of their evaluation of your business standing is rational, and part of it is intuitive or emotional. Some of the evaluation might be fair and some of it almost certainly is unfair. How do you navigate this without getting too bent out of shape? If you can stay on your feet, agile and responsive during the process, you will have a better chance of swinging headwinds of doubt and opposition into tailwinds of interest and opportunity.

Special opportunity for team coaches to explore BD presence further

As we build a community of advanced business development practitioners for team coaching at Wider Value, this question has emerged for deeper reflection, so it’s set as the topic for our next advanced seminar: