Borrowed this idea from @barneyausten over at My Project Tracker blog.
“I read a great post from Chris Brogan the other week about using a blog post to be able to share more about why you recommend following someone on Twitter. I thought it was a great concept”
Here are some top #sales folks to follow on Twitter (more…)
The environment in which salespeople now sell has changed considerably. The process of buying has changed – therefore the process of selling has changed accordingly…. Markets are smaller and more complex – there are less genuine opportunities for salespeople to sell…. Decision makers and the people involved in decision making have changed meaning purchasing decisions are now longer and much more complex. Reality check! The bottom line is that the market will not adapt or return for the salesperson, it is now up to the salesperson to change – so as to meet the needs of this new sales environment. If you are still a salesperson in 2010, firstly congratulations – here are 5 recommended strategies you can employ towards getting on top of your target this year.
1. Start by Moving the Target Up
What? I hear you ask, my target is challenging enough without putting additional target and pressure on top. Wrong! Sales are ultimately about smart averages, so putting your target up a notch means you give yourself more breathing space from the get go. In planning for a higher target, you automatically increase your chances of hitting and exceeding your original target. It’s a simple fact!
2. Analyse Performance and then Plan for Success
It amazes me to this day how many companies continue to use KPIs badly and how many salespeople insist on trying to fudge the figures. Your KPIs are one of the mostly deadly sales tools you have. A proper and realistic analysis of your KPIs will provide you with everything you need to know and do to improve your performance. In short, they provide you with the building blocks for both your long-term and short-term sales planning.
So KPIs provide you with the relevant information and your sales plan decides how and where you intend to spend your time. You will need to plan for long-term (yearly) and short-term (monthly, weekly). It’s critical that you get this right, because your time is your ultimate resource in sales – so ensure that you are spending it wisely. In the words of a famous ex-Manchester united captain “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”
3. The Trick is to Prospect rather than Close
A key skill for all sales people in this environment is their ability to find genuine prospects. Its takes time and research but it pays to do so. A problem for a great many salespeople right now is that rather invest in prospecting, they are choosing instead to invest in closing. In other words, they are continuing to spend the majority of their time chasing prospects that don’t want to buy rather than finding prospects that do. You could almost call it, a type of sales madness. Remember, research is the key piece when prospecting. The more thorough your research, the better prepared you will be to meet the decision maker and ultimately the greater your chances of success.
4. Selling is Easier when you Embrace Technology
While technology may on one hand threaten the very role of the salesperson, it also assists us to be increasingly more effective and professional. Information is freely and widely available on the organisations and the people that we want to sell to. It is now easier than ever to connect with these people and networking can happen at speeds unimaginable only a few years ago. A salesperson that is not willing or afraid of these new tools will quickly be left behind. Embrace rather fight technology, it just made selling a whole lot easier.
5. Become a Business Person, not a Sales Person
In 2010, being a salesperson alone no longer cuts the mustard. Prospect’s time is increasingly valuable; they are only interested in speaking to people who will bring lots of value to any conversations. The flipside is that you now are expected to know a lot more than merely what you sell. The salespeople that will succeed will be those who bring with them developed and strong business acumen. They will be those who can step behind the desk of the senior managers within organisations and see the world through their eyes.
This means that the role of salesperson is also that of someone who has an aptitude and appetite to constantly better oneself. If your company are lacking in their support in this regard, you must pick up the slack, and consciously devote both your person and time to learning. The wealth of available information means that this is now very easy to do. So whether it is reading a business book a month or subscribing to some top class business blogs, it will not happen unless you make it so.
My Sales Prediction for 2010…..
While 2009 could be considered perhaps survival of the fittest in terms of its effect on professional sales and sales people, it is my prediction, that in 2010 – we may start to see the survival of the most knowledgeable. I am not one who subscribes to the theory that technology is making sales a redundant profession. It is my belief that what we are actually seeing is the start of the true professionalism of sales. It would make me exceedingly happy if this turns out to be the case…. Please be sure to share your strategies towards making target in the comments section below and the very best of luck in 2010.
At the start of 09, I expected my own sales performance to increase significantly. I based this expectation on two sound contributing factors.
1.There would be a greater need for my services.
Companies would have a much greater need for improvement around sales performance than in previous years. If making sales would be harder in 09, mine was a recession solution.
2. I offered a guaranteed result.
I would be offered a ROI payment option, which meant that there, was no risk in investing in my sales programmes - I guaranteed actual sales improvement. This would give me a significant competitive advantage.
My analysis of how I performed vs. my expectation.
I recently undertook an analysis of my personal sales performance for the year to date. While I am satisfied with many of my performance indicators, I am slightly disappointed with my win ratio per meeting with new customers specifically. I expected a nearer 100% hit ratio, I delivered 62%.
While some may be happy with such a return in this environment, my continued sales improvement has always resulting from me not resting on my laurels; and continually seeking out ways in which I can better what I do.
So how do I explain this?
Initially I must admit that I struggled.
While there may be room for improvement around my qualification process, I work very hard to ensure that I am talking to genuine prospects that are in a position to buy. I believe I am talking to the right people and at the right time and I am offering a better product than that of my competitors.
A more convoluted, complex and ever changing decision making process may go some way to explaining my disappointment. However, I don’t think that it is the only factor and even if it is, my payment options should go a long way to overcoming this as an obstacle.
So I asked myself, what I am not considering, what might I have not planned for.
I begin by revisited my stats on paper, I compared what I was doing against best practice, there was very little by way of explanation.
I then begin to consider that my expectation was unreasonable, that I hadn’t given enough weighting to the recession factor. While it might have worked for me on many occasions, perhaps it had also worked against me.
I quickly realised that I was engaging in the type of attitude; I so often have to help overcome in those that I work with. I was engaging in can’t do rather than can do.
I shook myself down and decided to investigate further. I pride myself on good planning, yet here was something I had failed to consider. It had left no apparent trace of itself in my work. It was bloody invisible.
Invisible! Now there’s a thought, what might have been invisible to me at the start of the year? Something I would not normally consider…….. Ah! Gotya.
it’s FEAR!!
I have trained myself to ignore fear; it plays no part in my decisions, my planning or my expectations. This philosophy has always served me well. I realised at an early age what fear can do, how it can control and how it can destroy.
At the start of the year, my intentional ignorance towards fear had allowed me to plan for success, to see abundance, and to plan for opportunity. Sounds great?
I’m afraid only to a point (did you get the joke?).
This same philosophy had blind sighted me, not to my own fears but towards the fears of others; in this case the fear in my prospects. I had failed to consider and to plan for their fears.
I started to recall the conversations where I had failed to win the deal. A comment trend started to appear.
“I know where we need to go, but I am not prepared to do what it takes to get there”
Yes, I had helped them to identify their need.
Yes, I had shown them the solution.
Yes, I had taken away the risk.
Tick, tick, tick…
But No, In a great many cases, I had failed to take away their fear of making the decision. Because I had failed to plan for fear, in doing so I had also failed to plan for how to deal with my prospect’s fear.
The good news, I am now on the case.
Salespeople often complain about their sales targets so first let’s start with stating some realities about targets
