Guide to our Sales Reset Community of Practice

What’s a Community of Practice?

A community of practice is a group of people who share a common concern, interest, or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better through regular interaction.

For us at Sales Reset, our shared interest is learning how to sell more effectively by prioritising our customers’ success with the products and services we sell.

Focus on Community

The extreme highs and lows experienced by people in sales roles can sometimes make selling feel very lonely, even when we’re members of a really good sales team. Our focus on community means our most committed members are keen to help and support each other and to learn from every member’s experiences.

Most salespeople have relatively little contact with people who sell very different products and services in widely diverse market sectors. Within our Sales Reset community of practice, there’s a growing range of diverse experiences and knowledge waiting to be shared and learned from.

Learning together with other people is better, faster and more fun than learning on your own.
The members of our community who choose the highest levels of engagement find levels of support and encouragement that are genuinely transformative and life-changing.

Focus on Best Practices

Within our community, we already have a range of clearly understood best practices. One of the benefits of joining our community is the opportunity to learn these best practices in order to improve sales results.

However, the best practices we recommend in our community are not fixed and unchangeable. We strongly encourage all our members to help us improve every aspect of our agreed best practices.

Focus on Practice to Improve Skills

New ways of doing things have to be practiced. Just knowing about something new does not mean that we can do it!

(For readers in the UK, please accept our apologies for not using your normal spelling of the word “practised” with an s! We’re a global community of practice. Around the world, there are more people who spell practiced with a “c”. Thank you, our friends in America!)

When somebody becomes aware of different and better ways to do something, it often takes considerable practice to become skilled in these new methods.

In our community of practice, we’re very focused on the need to practice our new Sales Reset selling skills.

“Coaching Customers” is the most significant example of a new Sales Reset skill that requires very considerable practice.

Simply knowing about coaching customers does not mean that somebody can do it. Our community members have found that it can take considerable practice over a period of years to become truly skilled in this fundamentally different way of selling.

We strongly encourage all our community members to make the most of a range of ways of practicing:

• Deliberate Practice - Deliberate practice is a highly structured and purposeful method of skill improvement that requires focused attention and specific goals aimed at enhancing performance. Unlike regular practice, which may involve repetitive and mindless activities, deliberate practice involves continuous feedback, strategic planning, and is effortful in nature, targeting areas that need improvement.

• Reflective Practice - Reflective practice is the process of reflecting on one's actions to engage in continuous learning and improvement, involving critical thinking about experiences to develop personal and professional growth.

• Role-Play Practice - Role play in sales training enhances skills such as asking better questions, empathy, listening, and problem-solving. It provides a safe environment for practice, boosts confidence, and allows for feedback and adaptation to diverse customer scenarios, ultimately improving real-world sales performance.

• LIVE! Practice - LIVE! Practice sessions give our community members the opportunity to meet online and practice their selling skills with salespeople in a growing range of sectors. Our LIVE! Practice sessions are one of the most significant benefits of our Sales Reset Together community.

Choose Your Level of Engagement

We have a range of levels of engagement for the members of our community of practice..

From the lowest level of engagement to the highest, these levels of engagement are:

1. Awareness - People become aware of our Sales Reset community of practice and choose to learn more about us, perhaps by reading this guide, following us on social media or joining our LinkedIn group, World-Class Customer Success Selling.

2. Subscribers - Join our Community of Practice as a subscriber to one or both of our weekly email newsletters, Weekly Sales Reset for people in frontline sales roles, and Sales Reset Leaders for people who lead sales teams.

3. Champions - Join our Sales Reset Together community and participate actively in our LIVE! training and practice sessions online. Access a growing range of learning resources, get specific feedback on how to improve your sales proposals, ask questions, and share your experiences. Learn how to become a champion of our Sales Reset best practices, and expect your sales results to be what you'd expect from a champion!

Thanks for reading all the way through to the end of this guide!

It will be great to welcome you into our Sales Reset community of practice.

We'd love to help you sell more effectively by prioritising your customers’ success with the products and services you sell. We'll be very interested in learning about you and your experiences using Sales Reset best practices.