“We’re making hundreds of phone calls, sending emails, plugging activities into CRM to track it all, and yet, we are NOT getting results. We are not hitting our budgeted revenue or profit and the year is not looking good. The office is hustling and bustling all day long, we are really, really working hard! I expect the results will come before the end of the year…wo
If this is your story, then I have some advice that you are really going to like. You probably don’t often hear this, but it is the key to putting you on course. “Slow Down!”
Now you may be thinking, “Easy for you to say! I don’t have the luxury of slowing down, I can’t even get everything I need to get done as it is. And, by the way, I think my team needs to act with a little more urgency, not less!
We work with companies and sales teams of all sizes and tenures and the common theme among those who consistently win is that they are intentional with their activities and their time. There’s not a whirlwind around them, yet there is urgency. They deploy this principle: Slow Down to Move Fast. It’s like meditation for sales and it works.
Here are three easy ways to slow down and boost sales. Implement them today!
Plan Your Day
Seth Godin, entrepreneur and best-selling author states, “In a world where we have too many choices and too little time, we obviously choose to ignore stuff.”
Every day, we decide what to act upon. Where our time is spent. What is urgent. The key to success is to own our calendars and block our time, so these decisions are habitually the right ones. In sales, quality selling hours matter more than anything else and thus the need to be intentional every day about both the selling hours and the quality of these hours is of utmost importance.
Think of the difference between the sales professional who spends the first two hours of every day calling for referrals, introducing new solutions to current clients and reaching out to prospects with great messaging, versus one who is putting out fires, checking status on orders, and answering emails between making a few calls each day. Both are busy and probably getting the required number of “activities” on the scorecard. Only one is consistently successful.
Studies show the ideal amount of time sales reps should spend planning their day is roughly 30 minutes per day. This converts to the highest amount of quality selling hours. Make this your first habit starting today.
Plan Your Calls
Sales professionals who are in the habit of using a Call Plan for every sales call outperform those who don’t. Just ask any buyer!
The ability to have a conversation with a client or a prospect is a gift of their time and gold to the sales professional. Winning reps know this and are prepared to build trust, understand their customers’ operating reality through effective questioning, and add value through sharing relevant knowledge. Quality conversations are needed to build relationships and relationships are needed to win in sales.
Call Planning is necessary to ensure you fully understand the company and the person you will be speaking with and that you are prepared to add value and have quality conversations. Don’t wing your sales calls because you’re a natural or because you’ve done them so many, many times before.
Assess Your Losses
Win some, lose some. That’s sales. Successful sales professionals don’t take this attitude; they assess their losses no matter how big or small and learn from them.
Taking the time to dissect a loss and making the necessary changes is what they do to win at a more rapid rate in the future. They stop chasing deals they can’t win (like cold RFPs) because every minute spent chasing losing deals is not spent cultivating winning deals — it’s a double whammy when it comes to time lost.
If you employ this mindset, “I got outsold and here are the adjustments I am going to make,” you will be forced to slow down, get better and win faster in the future.
Sales, like any other profession, requires constant learning and development to experience consistent success. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity as so astutely pointed out by Albert Einstein, yet we see it happening every day. “Make more calls!” is often the advice or direction of the leaders. How about instead changing the message to “Make more quality calls and here are the adjustments we need to make”?
Butler Street – Management Consulting, Training & Research
Butler Street enables organizations to develop, implement and execute their business strategies through great client relationships and high performing leaders and teams. At Butler Street, we are knowledge-sharing operators; a combination of highly experienced CEOs, COOs, VPs of Sales and VPs of Operational Excellence. Butler Street’s key differentiation is that we, as operating executives, have successfully implemented the client and talent development solutions and we have developed the techniques required to customize them with actionable insights specific to your business. Learn more at www.butlerstreet.com.
