Let’s look Inside the Sales Conversation for the week of May 30, 2022
Working in a bubble as many of us do, we sometimes ask, “What are others thinking? Am I unique in my sales challenges?” If these issues are your issues, why not join the conversation? Here’s a few recent discussions found in The Sales Vault and our free Sales Community on Slack.
1. “How do I get to the next level?"
We had a full house at last week’s Sales Vault workshop on the subject. With participants—Sales reps and selling owners— all coming from different levels of experience, we came up with a list of questions to ask. Here are just four:
- “Do I need to work more hours or more efficiently?”
- “Am I calling on the best target market for me?”
- “Could I improve the quality of my sales call?”
- “What happens if I don’t get to the next level?”
That last question is particularly interesting to me. Tony Robbins says people are more motivated by the pain of not succeeding than by the joy of reaching success.
2. "How do I create more time for selling?”
There is a lot of meat on this bone. I could talk about increasing efficiency, better preparation, and God knows we could all make better choices, but I will give you something else to consider:
Don’t multitask.
I think back to an analogy my guitar teacher used a long time ago. He said, “If you have 12 trees to plant, don’t dig 12 holes, insert 12 trees, and filled them with dirt. Instead, complete one tree planting at a time.” That is, take one task from start to finish before moving onto the next. I have found this simple suggestion applicable in many areas of my life, including focus. This has freed up more selling time for me and has increased the quality of that selling time.
3. “I just can’t get anyone on the phone"
Okay, this one drives me bananas. While I hear this complaint from salespeople quite frequently, very rarely do I consider it to be valid. A more accurate and truthful statement would be, “I call people once or twice and if they don’t pick up or don’t call me back, I quit and blame them.”
In back-to-back conversations with salespeople last week, both discussed the difficulty in talking to prospects and customers. When I dug down deeper into the sales activity the first rep was following, I learned he very rarely made more than one call and if he did, it was weeks after the first one. What’s more, it was a horrible “Who buys your printing?” kind of sales call. The second rep also talked about how difficult it was to get someone, but he found success through tenacity and creativity. He simply refused to give up. What’s more, the quality of his sales calls was outstanding, having been well-researched. Those two things combined resulted in appointments.
Getting back to that first discussion point, getting to your next level could very well be a combination of improving the quality of your sales calls and increasing their quantity. Sometimes the simplest ways are the best!
Want more? Join the conversation and be a part of our sales community in The Sales Vault.
