I wanted to share with you the advice that I gave my coaching clients last week as a way of getting prepared for today, the start of the three most important prospecting months of the year. Perhaps this will help you, too…
- Look back— in every inbox, there are email conversations of opportunities now past. Before we move forward, let’s clean up the old business by backing up a few months and simply reviewing archived emails. If there are any jobs you lost, follow-up. See how things went. Ask if there are any other projects coming up. One coaching client found five great opportunities to follow up on. How many will you find?
- Prepare for marketing— admittedly, this was more of a task for last week but it might not be too late to pull together some YouTube success stories or testimonials, anything that you could send someone that better tells the story of who you are and how you are helping others. It’s good to have a handful of go-to items to send off in lieu of yet another follow-up phone call or email.
- Plan ahead— and finally, set up a plan for the months of September, October, and November. Start with general, “Make more sales calls looking for new business” statements and then narrow them down with specific, quantified sales activities. Make a plan for September then remind yourself to have a look at it before October starts.
As you may have noticed, I spend a significant amount of time on the subject of creating a sales plan in the short term. It’s that important. Ignore this advice at your own peril for when January comes and you are disappointed in your 2019 sales, think back to this moment… And then don’t make the same mistake twice.
