The Heart Of The Job!
Everyday you have new products to learn, paperwork to complete, hundreds of customer problems to solve, meetings to attend, inside people to cajole, managers to mollify-and, on top of all this, you are expected to sell something.
It's hard to do so when you have all these other aspects of your job howling for your attention. How do you manage all of this while at the same time build sales? How do you sort through all of this and focus on the essentials of your job?
Good question. Let's start by identifying one of those essentials. Think about the sales process-the activities it takes to make a sale. Certain key activities come to mind. You know that you need to make appointments with qualified decision makers, to collect information about their needs, to build relationships, to demonstrate products, to follow up, to answer questions, etc. Your list of important sales activities is probably expanding monthly.
Everyday you have new products to learn, paperwork to complete, hundreds of customer problems to solve, meetings to attend, inside people to cajole, managers to mollify-and, on top of all this, you are expected to sell something.
But if you´re going to focus on the essentials, there is one absolutely necessary activity around which everything else resolves. All of the other activities are either a means to bring about this activity, or actions that spring out of this one key activity.
Making An Offer Is Key
What is it? Making a persuasive offer to your customer. Thinking of it in its simplest terms, making an offer means saying something like: "Here is this ... (product, service, package, deal.) How about buying it?"
You make an offer whenever you respond to a request for a price. When you demonstrate a product, you make an offer. When you bring in a piece of literature and tell your customer about some new product or service, you make an offer. When you respond to your customer´s request for information about a product or service, you make an offer. All of these are variations on a theme, but all of them can be classified as the presentation of an offer.
Those offers are the heart of your job. Without them, you can sell nothing. Your customers will never buy if you never offer them something to buy.
Look At The Numbers
It is an unmistakable fact, that in sales, quantity counts. In other words, to be successful, you must make a certain number of sales offers. Regardless of how much skill or sophistication you apply to your job as a salesperson, you cannot totally negate the quantity aspect of it. Given two salespeople in equal territories, of equal abilities, and the one who makes the greater quantity of offers will generally have better results.
With this in mind, one simple way to cut through all the things that you have to do is to focus on the essential component of the sales process-making an appropriate quantity of sales offers. If you're looking for a simple way to increase your results, focus on the quantity of sales offers that you make.
Do two things:
1. Begin to keep track of how many sales offers you make in the course of a week. Initially, don't worry about what you're presenting, and don't be concerned about the dollar volume of each potential piece of business. Those are more sophisticated concerns that can be considered later. For now, just keep track of how many offers you make. Use a simple hash mark system in your planner. Each day, make a hash mark for each offer you presented to a customer. At the end of each week, add up the number of hash marks.
There is an amazing law of management stating that the behavior you measure is the behavior you get. That applies to self-management as well. Just the act of keeping track (measuring) the quantity of sales offers you present will help you focus on those essential activities. As you become more aware of the quantity of sales offers, you´ll naturally be drawn to ways to increase that quantity.
2. Begin to find ways to increase the quantity of those sales offers. If you find yourself averaging five presentations a week, try to increase that to an average of 10.
When you´re overwhelmed with too much to do, and you´re feeling like you´re being drawn in a kaleidoscope of conflicting directions, focus on the essential part of your job. Measure and increase the quantity of sales offers you make. It will keep you close to the heart of your job and help you focus on the highest priority activities.
Source: Dave Kahle, a nationally-known speaker and sales coach, has published more than 1,000 articles, six books in 10 languages, and numerous multi-media training programs. In addition, he serves on the editorial advisory panel of two newsletters: The Competitive Edge and Sales & Marketing Excellence.