by Steve Chriest

“A Sure Fire Winner”

As a sales professional, there is at least one sure-fire way to increase your value to your company and to any organization – learn to read and understand financial statements.

Jessica Byrnes wrote to CFO magazine recently and said “There is not a single person working is a U.S. public company…who should not be able to read and understand a financial statement. While this may be true, another reader, Dave Kosek, wrote that Ms. Byrnes was “…out of touch with reality.” He continued, “I would bet that more than half of the people in management of our U.S. public companies cannot read or understand a financial statement, not to mention the people who actually do the work!”

An outsider might think that surely everyone in the equipment finance business would know all about financial statements, but that doesn't seem to be true. I am told, in fact, that a great many salespeople in the finance industry don't know much, if anything, about financial statements.

I think most managers would agree that many equipment finance salespeople don't need to become experts in reading financial statements. Unless a salesperson is coincidentally involved in structuring transactions that requires expertise in financial analysis, it may not be necessary to become an expert in analyzing financials, but understanding the basics of financial statements can't hurt professionally, and can help salespeople personally.

In keeping with my perspective that people change behaviors only when they perceive something beneficial in it for them to do so, here is my short list of the benefits to leasing salespeople of learning to read and understand financial statements:

- The ability to read and understand financial statements will make you appear smarter.
- You will build credibility in your organization with your managers, credit analysts and senior managers.
- You will build credibility with your customers as you demonstrate through analysis that you truly understand their business.
- You will save yourself gobs of time as you learn to pass on deals that you know will waste the time of credit analysts and will lead to frustration for everyone.
- You will gain confidence and independence when making personal investment decisions.

From a selfish perspective, assisting credit analysts with an educated point of view on a deal, or saving them time by discarding deals that don't make the grade from a financial analysis perspective, will naturally position you in the eyes of the credit analysts as a professional who cares about their time and workload. Don't be surprised when most analysts are willing to listen to you when you want to present a deal that doesn't quite fit the credit box, but may deserve consideration based on other criteria.

Finally, achieving some level of expertise in understanding financial statements can actually be fun. When you understand that all businesses, sooner or later, suffer from commoditization and become white elephants, that “profit” isn't the end-game of business, but is instead the ultimate cost of staying in business, and that without profits, and real free cash flow, a company is unable to continue the investments it must make to stay competitive, you begin to look at a company's financials with a different perspective. You may even come up with an idea no one else has thought of for keeping a business profitable or helping a business out of trouble.

If you are truly looking for a way to become a more valuable resource to your company, and to your customers, learn about financial statements. There are more resources than ever to help you learn, and you will profit professionally and personally!

Copyright © 2006 Selling Up TM . All Rights Reserved.

About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up TM (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting firm specializing in sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of industries. He is the author of Selling Up , The Proven System For Reaching and Selling Senior Executives , and Five Minute Financial Analyst , an online workshop teaching basic financial analysis. You can reach Steve at schriest@selling-up.com .