4 surprising strategies for drastically different sales results.
Most people work very very hard. Most people reap results far below their abilities and efforts deserve.
If your thought is that you will work harder yet essentially do more of the same… and expect vastly different sales results… you have already lost.
Here are some tips as to how to leverage your efforts to achieve drastically superior sales results the next four months… and beyond.
1. Stop talking to low probability, low volume, low margin suspects.
One of the most surprising things I run into again, and again, and again, is how much time and resources people spend communicating with groups of suspects that never should have been on the radar in the first place.
If your first reaction to this is “Scott, you never know…” race to the nearest mirror and repeat 50 times “I am a knucklehead. I am a knucklehead.”
Many of the individuals and salesteams have far more “great” targets to communicate with than they have time or resources for, yet spend… I am not kidding, 50%, 60%, 70% or more of their time… communicating with suspects, who, relative to their other options… never should have been called in the first place.
If you want drastically different sales results in the next few months, spend just a few hours… yes, a few hours… profiling your highest probability targets. Call them first. Drop the rest.
2. Increase the efficiency of your appointment setting and prospecting efforts.
You only have so much time to spend opening doors and dropping prospects into your sales funnel. Many times drastic increases in new opportunity meetings come from just being organized and ripping out inefficiencies in your prospecting process.
You can initiate your sales process with more targets that fit the profile of your very clients and accounts.
Relatively simple and easy things like proper use of a contact manager, having a coding and segmentation system and working a defined call process are low effort big quick payback activities.
3. Increase clarity of your value and credibility statements.
It would be a good bet to wager that the words you use to gain entry to high value accounts are too many, too foggy and too confusing.
At the critical moment of first impression – people don’t sufficiently grasp what you do, why you are credible, the 3 top benefits you deliver or even what you want them to do… so you lose them.
Reformulate what you say. Be clear. Make an impact.
In my work with salesteams, call centers and individuals, many times it takes just an hour to turn a mushy pitch into something that is clear, communicates value and has impact.
4. Ask better questions at your first meetings.
If you asked me “What is the one thing I should do to close more sales?” my immediate response would be “Ask better questions.”
When you ask the right questions you discover what the prospect is thinking, what benefits they want, what their fears and doubts are, you discover previous experiences and future plans.
You sell only to that. When you assume you know these things you lose deals.
This is too big a topic for today, but suffice it to say, most salespeople ask too few questions calculated to uncover info that they will use to close deals. As a result, conversion rates suffer.
Best wishes for sales success,
Scott Channell
