GreatSalesPeople.com

Plan to Win

Time management is one of the best tools at your disposal.  You should have a grand plan for your year,which you can break down by quarter.  Then every week, you should take at least a few minutes to plan out your activities for the week.  Each day, you should assess what needs to be done that day, and have it written out.  (It can be electronic or on paper depending on your preferences.)

Remember: If you fail to plan; you’re planningto fail.

Prospect Quality & Quantity Both Count

It’s important for you to include adequate prospecting time in your weekly and daily planning — and it’s just as important for you to focus your prospecting on the right prospects.  If they don’t have a need for your product or not the right decision authority level you’re not likely to get far.  So do your homework to increase the likelihood that the people you contact are going to be right people.  Then qualify every step of the process to ensure you spend your time with the right people at the right companies.

You Can’t Control What You Can’t Measure

Revenue attainment is all about learning from what you’ve done in the past and what others have done in similar situations; then adjusting to make it work better next time.  Even if you make it only 5% better, on a $1,000,000 quota, you’ve attained an additional $50,000.  But if you can’t measure how well you’ve done, you can’t determine what works best.  For instance, if you offer multiple times for a meeting will you get more meetings accepted?  (In my case, the answer is a resounding yes!)  You should measure everything you can, and adjust as needed.  Your CRM system and other tools should make that easier.

The Little Things are Really Big Things

A lot of little advantages add up to become a big advantage.  Whether that’s product features & benefits or the way you work with clients.  Knowing when a prospect is likely to pick up the phone means you make fewer calls to reach him.  Understanding which features of your product are more important to clients in each industry mean you’ll hit a hot button earlier in your presentation.  Including full information related to meeting time and place means fewer missed meetings due to mistakes.  (Even including timezones for phone meetings impacts your productivity).

So pay attention to the little things that help you when they go right and hinder you when they don’t.  It often takes little extra effort.

Focus

According to baseball pundits, Ted Williams, Wade Boggs and Bryce Harper can all focus so well when batting, that they can see the seams on the baseball.  That’s part of their success — the focus.  And it’s the same for you as a sales person.  The better your focus, the more time you spend on the things that matter.  That’s your way to hit for average.

Be a Good Listener

If you want sell at the highest level, you’ll listen more than you talk — because selling more is about satisfying the need of the buyer — and you’ll never be able to do that unless you listen to understand what he really wants and needs.

Do you have productivity tips that will help achievers become super achievers?  Let us know, so we can share them.