You work for a company and are expected to design and/or deliver a product or service and at the same time are expected to increase sales revenue from existing customers. That is the role of a do-seller. You work at a company that requires you to sell your services first and then deliver those services after you make the sale. That is the role of a do-seller. In both roles, you may also be expected to manage the delivery of what was sold.

None of the roles have limits. The roles cross different verticals and are not different just for a company of a certain size. Employees of companies of any size who are asked to serve two masters may be a vendor-doer or a vendor-doer. A person’s formal job title is not a key indicator of either role. Both roles thrive in the background, below the surface, and are an engine that sustains and drives continuous revenue streams.

There are some really tough challenges associated with being successful in serving two teachers, your primary job role and your secondary job role. What makes paper even more difficult is when priorities shift from making to selling and selling to making. People who fill these roles are not considered full-time salespeople, and therefore face some additional challenges if they want to be successful on the sales side of the equation.

1. They must view sales from a professional perspective that empowers the individual to respect the role of seller as well as the role of maker.

2. They must understand the benefits of using formal processes for new business development, key account management, and strategic selling for complex sales opportunities.

3. They must understand the importance of managing a formal sales pipeline, including the statistics that offer the user the opportunity to improve performance results.

4. They must have the acumen to better manage sales meetings to get results that meet the needs of both buyer and seller.

5. They must have the acumen to better manage the time and internal and external resources associated with closing a sale.

6. They must have the education to overcome the most common sales problems associated with today’s challenging sales environment.

7. They must use a common sales language in order to communicate more efficiently and effectively with each other, with people with other practice backgrounds, and with the full-time salespeople who work in the organization.

Let’s start with common sales language. Below are four terms that encompass what salespeople do, whether they’re salespeople-doers, salespeople-doers, or full-time professional salespeople. For this article, I have simplified the definitions.

· satisfy the demand: Occurs when a buyer continues to purchase a product and/or service from the seller as a preferred supplier. Renewals require a certain amount of work from the delivery team to ensure that the customer continues to be “satisfied” with what is delivered.

· service request: It occurs when the buyer is looking for a solution to a problem and encourages other suppliers to bid on the business, or when the buyer is simply looking to purchase a product or service. The demand for service is also the main driver of “complex sales opportunities”, where strategy and strategic sales tactics become critical.

· create demand: It is the essence of new business development and encompasses three important skill sets:

o Be able to involve a buyer in solving an existing problem that remained unresolved for a period of months or years.

o Be able to identify a need that the buyer did not know they had and be able to involve the buyer in the joint development of a solution.

o Be able to uncover the buyer’s pain and be able to demonstrate how you can alleviate, reduce or eliminate the pain using your company’s offerings.

· defend and cultivate:When the account manager, or account management team, defends the account from encroaching competition and continues to expand their reach within the account to increase profitable revenue streams in other business units and geographic locations, and when the account manager, or account management team, is able to generate revenue from other products and services not previously delivered within the account.

Enterprising sellers spend most of their time meeting demand and championing and nurturing the accounts they work on. Their challenge is to find new sales opportunities in new accounts where they can meet demand and create demand.

Doing sellers, on the other hand, spend most of their time serving demand and creating demand. In other words, they focus on developing new business in new accounts. This does not mean that they ignore Defending & Farming on their existing accounts.

Let’s go back to the initial question; Are you a seller-doer or a seller-doer? More importantly, if you are a do-seller and want to transition into the do-seller role, how do you make that happen?