Art Post
I really didn’t want to use “I Suck as a Salesperson” in the title, so I’ll use it here. Even though I had an OK month when it comes to revenue, it seemed that every sale or opportunity I touched had issues.
Personally, I had too much on my plate, February had me at 22 or 23 opportunities that could close, most of them came down the wire and a lot of them rolled to March. In January of this year I asked for a higher quota to push myself.
I found the opportunities, however, with so many open opportunities I was overwhelmed and fell short of hitting quota by about $3K. The good thing, I should have a super March, the bad thing, poor planning on my part on some of the deals and just not enough time in the day. Gee, if I only had another me! Yeah, and I forgot I took two vacation days in a short month, that didn’t help either.
Selling Days
Moving into March, I’ll also be short on selling days because of our Presidents Club Trip. I will lose 22 percent of my selling days this month. How many of you actually look at the calendar every month and count how many selling days you have? I have the selling days mapped out for each month of the year in advance and it helps knowing when we have a longer and shorter sales cycle.
What Will I Do Different This Month?
For starters I could not prospect as much, which would give me more of a breather, however, that’s just not my style. What I really need to do is to better manage my time and appointments. Meaning I’ll do a better job at setting appointments that are close together, this way I can get four or five appointments done in one day and then schedule appointments for only three days a week. Since I have to be in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll use Monday afternoon for a few appointments and then book solid for Wednesday and Friday. I’ll also try to book more appointments at 8:30 or 9:00a.m.instead of 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. (setting early appointments can generate an extra 3 hours per week). But above all I need to stick to the plan. I usually follow a plan like this faithfully, however, I got sloppy and paid for it.
Prospecting/Quoting
I did find myself on more than a few occasions this month doing quotes during the day, and this is a no-no for me. I need to “prospect by day and quote by night”. My job is not a 9-5 job and I’m OK with that because of the fringe benefits that come with hitting your numbers on a consistent basis. Moving forward this month, I’ve pre-printed seven sets of forms that I need to book my sales. I’ll keep some at home, some in my case, and a few in the office.
Selling
It’s all about being prepared, on every appointment. I’ll be more prepared to process an order and not state, ‘I’ll send that to you or let’s schedule another appointment.’ It will be more about, “while we’re both together why can’t we wrap this up now.” I’ll also do a better job at prepping the prospect on the time frame that I’m looking to wrap orders up by. This will often tell me what the prospect is thinking and if they are ready to make a move.
In the end even an old pro like me can get bogged down, get a little sloppy (which leads to its own set of issues) about managing time, appointments, closing, researching, prospecting, returning calls, quoting, responding to e-mails, and the daily grind of the business. Didn’t I say I needed another me?
Yes, and BTW, I’m really proud of one of the salespeople I work with in the office. He beat me this month for revenue and I’m glad he did. He earned it and I’m glad he comes to me with many of his questions about the industry, sales and customers. However, the gleaning of free information is now over. He is now the competition in our sales office.
Good selling!
