Business acumen: a skill that can help your employees think like owners, align your workforce, and develop your leaders. It can also increase the skill of your sales people. Let’s face it: selling isn’t what it used to be.

Previously, in order to close a sale, sales professionals built a relationship, diagnosed needs, translated product features into customer benefits, and asked for the sale. Not anymore.

Selling has evolved, and your sales professionals need business acumen to win more sales. You should think of business acumen as the competitive advantage. Today, sales professionals have to earn the trust of their customers. A big part of that trust is care.

“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.” –Bob Hooey

Here’s how business acumen can increase the skill of your sales teams:

1.) It helps them see how their customer’s business works. Successful sales personnel possess keen insights into their customers’ financial and strategic issues, allowing them to employ that knowledge to align their solutions to real needs. Business acumen prepares sales professionals and sales teams to confidently and credibly position products and services and gain a competitive edge.

2.) It helps them see how their own business works. Knowing the impact and importance of sales forecasting and price discounting on the company’s financials is important. Business acumen provides a lens into how individual decisions and actions impact their own organization’s financial success.

3.) It allows them to empathize with their customer’s. Sales professionals are now expected to become trusted advisors who can work alongside customers to improve their businesses. Business acumen allows sales professionals to cultivate and maintain a business partnership, truly understanding the customer’s landscape.

You read in our last blog how Business Acumen Training can help you do more with less. Effective business acumen training covers many competencies and skills required for an organization’s success; it’s like a multivitamin for your workforce.

In the last blog we saw how Business Acumen helps your employees think like an owner. In this blog, learn how business acumen can help align your organization.

1.) Employees at all levels in all jobs will understand marketplace issues driving change. As organizations continue to face tough decisions about processes, people, products, finances, and customers, their workforces need to understand how to deal with these critical issues. Business acumen equips a workforce with this knowledge, helping them to make better decisions.

2.) They will make decisions with the organization’s vision in mind.Organizations are recognizing that business acumen training puts all other development efforts into the context of executing corporate strategy, ensuring the strategic alignment of leaders and employees around the company’s goals, objectives, and strategies.

3.) They will understand why/how they fit into the big picture of success, being able to accept change based on this understanding. Change management is a lot like embarking on an exercise program. It takes willingness to change ingrained habits, and requires close attention to deeper motivational issues. People need to see the vision clearly and understand that every decision they make impacts the bottom line.

You are able to see just two uses for business acumen training. Catch the blog next week when we look at a third way business acumen can help your organization do more with less. We told you: Doing more with less has never been easier!