How many double-shoveling, swim-with-weights-on, time-wasting, inefficient, ineffective practices are built into your sales day?
Being busy is not a sign that you are on a path to reach your goals. If your efforts aren’t generating numbers, which indicate you are on the road to success – what exactly are you busy doing?
Your unwillingness to challenge the real value of behaviors you consider important, and how you allocate your sales time is costing you opportunities and cash.
If your strategies and time allocation are fundamentally unsound – you will not make more money, no matter how hard you work.
It is not a question of capability. Most have the capability yet can’t perform to that capability because too many time-wasting ineffective practices have become habit.
Here is a quick list of easy-to-fix bad practices that are costing you money.
1. You cast your prospecting and marketing net too wide. While you are out there talking to everybody, top high-value prospects are waiting for your call.
2. You are unorganized. If you don’t use a contact manager like Goldmine, Act or Maximizer, you are not really in sales, you are deluding yourself.
3. You have no idea what your sales funnel should look like.
4. You dilute your message when talking to suspects and prospects. You have never written down your best credibility and benefit statements and certainly never written down the most concise and clear means of communicating them.
5. You ask lousy questions. You never ask follow-up questions.
6. You are not prepared to handle objections. Common forms of resistance should not be an automatic dead-end.
7. You have no follow-up system.
8. You don’t know when to stop. You waste incredible amounts of time communicating with suspects and prospects well past the point of diminishing returns.
9. You don’t segment suspects by potential worth.
10. You don’t allocate your time properly.
11. You are not clear about what you want. An appointment? A next step? An order? If you are not clear or don’t ask, you don’t get.
All of the above are sales killers and very easy to fix.
Best wishes for sales success,
Scott Channell
