Here is an uncomfortable sales truth. Execute the basics of selling well and consistently, is enough to beat 95% of your competiton.
In fact, most of the quantum leaps in productivity and sales success come not from some advanced new better and improved strategy, but from propertly executing sales basics properly.
Let me repeat. The most common source of massive sales productivity shifts come from doing the basics well.
Even when I see companies using advanced techniques and technologies, they only get results when they are placed on top of a solid foundation of basic strategies.
When you mix caviar with turds you still have a turd.
If your organization is not approching sales with the basics done right, I don’t care how much technology, automation, miracle techniques, wishes or prayers you add on top, it is unlikely to work. Without the basics in place you are fighting the tide.
Get the basics right and build your sales on a solid foundation.
1. Know how to profile potential targets. Pick them carefully. Get out of this call anyone that might ever maybe possibly someday be a client ridiculousness. Get out of this plowing through lists you couldn’t call in years if it was your full time job. Pick just the top grade A prospects you can handle in the short term. Prioritize. Basic marketing 101 says the people most likely to buy from you look like the people that have already bought. Select carefully and prioritize your targets. Just a few hours here, a few hours, and there are even free tools and list sources to do it, result in massive productivity gains.
2. Get setup right and follow a call process. Can you articulate right now how you handle a target from first call to the time you let it go? How many times do you dial? When? If you can’t, the lack of a simple process is costing you. Are you using a contact manager? If you are not you are fooling yourself about having a shot at sales success. Just takes a few hours to get setup and the result is a massive productivity gain. What works is pretty simple.
3. What to say. Sorry, but I have to rant a little here. What works is different from what you want to do. Get over it. Find out the structure of what top lead generators say and follow that structure. It still baffles me as to how individuals can be taught script structures that work consistently, yet they choose to wing it or use words that are not even remotely close to the structures proven to work? Why?
I cannot tell you how many times I have worked with people who just can’t bring themselves to follow established script structures and methods, who continue to work too hard for too little, who later call me and say something like “Scott, I was so frustrated I just decided to give up what I was doing and just follow the system, and as soon as I did, the big one arrived, the leads started coming in, etc.”
Many times people have told me stories of not being comfortable, willing, or accepting of the system and continued to plod along using only parts. They still clung to what they wanted to do. When they gave it up and just followed the system, they experienced a quantum leap in good leads and closed sales.
4. Touches. Hey, common sense marketing says that multiple consistent messages or “touches” delivered repetitively get the best results. Voicemail, Email, Linkedin messages, ravens and in rare circumstances snail mail can be your touch options. Using simple tools, at the same time you are leaving a voicemail you can be sending an email. Your target gets commonly themed consistent messages delivered simultaneously. Think that has an impact? And when those touches are copy written correctly they really have an impact. Simple stuff easy to do that has massive impact.
Start doing the basics and it is very likely you will experience significant gains in productivity, qualified leads and closed sales. A lot of these basics are borderline stupid simple.
So if it seems to be just too hard for you to generate enough qualified leads and appointments, are you doing the basics well?
Are you ready to give up what you are doing now and what you want to do, and ready to do what works?
If you are, it is very likely you can experience your own quantum leap of sales productivity.
