Successful salespeople won’t often dissect the dynamics of the sales environment, and what they do within the environment, but most will agree that there are two sides to selling: using sales skills to make a sale, and using people skills to make a sale.

We call these opportunity focus, and relationship focus; the two dimensions of selling.

Opportunity Focus

Salespeople need to know how to sell. Through experience and trial and error over many years, experts have developed the science that governs a winning sales process. There are countless interpretations; hundreds of books have been written describing it, and literally millions of successful salespeople have been weaned on it. Knowing how to sell—using proven rules and experience—that’s opportunity focus.

Relationship Focus

In the sales opportunity, both customer and salesperson pit their skills against each other. The customer wants the best deal, and the salesperson who wants to win the sale without compromising their company’s profitability. The selling process has a large element of negotiation about it, and all aspects of the process create tension. Relationships, if they can be struck, used, and sustained through the sale, can ease the tension. Leveraging interpersonal skills is the other dimension of selling, and that’s relationship focus.

The key to being a successful salesperson is not just using one or the other—it’s blending both, and also knowing when to shift focus from one to another.

–Excerpt from OPM: Opportunity Portfolio Management, the upcoming book.