The Sales Rep said to the Boss “Hey Boss, that sales idea you gave me last week worked a treat, can you give me another one”. The Boss thought for a second and replied “No, just keep on using the one I gave you”.
This wry anecdote illustrates just one of the traps salespeople can fall in to from time to time – in their eagerness to get to the next sale they make the mistake of seeking the new and exciting and not continuing to use already-known practices that work. They are lured away from the tried and true and, through carelessness, risk establishing poor practices rather than good ones.
Here are four examples of poor practices that can become established if salespeople become careless -
Failing to keep Activity records
Activity records are the Match Stats of the sales game. They must be maintained fastidiously; this means, as a minimum, counting the number of sales calls made (or received), the number of Sales Discussions held, the number of sales made, their value and their contribution to profit. This information needs to be recorded on a spreadsheet.
Only by doing this will you be able to easily and accurately calculate the key ratios within your sales process. This information is priceless when it comes to trouble-shooting in lean times or when planning for the future. You must have the means of calculating how much work needs to be done to achieve the goals you set for yourself and your business (or to get yourself out of trouble).
Failing to plan the next Action after every sales call
Too many sales opportunities slip through the cracks because of the lack of timely and appropriate follow-up. After each sales call two questions need to be asked in respect of the customer just spoken to. The first question is “What is the next step to be taken with that customer?” the second question is “When is the best time for that step to be taken?” The answers to these questions need to be recorded within your business’s CRM system in such a way that the customers requiring action on a particular day can be identified easily and, if necessary, a hard-copy list produced for sales action and supervision purposes. Your CRM software may need some tweaking to provide this.
Thinking that the key to the sale is in the Product (or Service) that you sell
The key to the sale is in the mind of the customer. Hopefully, a prospective customer has needs and wants that the benefits provided by your product (or service) can satisfy – if not, you don’t have a prospective customer at all. It is the salesperson’s job to get to understand the customer; the salesperson can do this only by asking relevant information-seeking questions in a conversational way. These information-seeking questions need to be structured so as to uncover the customer’s needs and wants. They also need to be well rehearsed so the salesperson doesn’t have to ‘wing it’ and can concentrate on understanding the customer's answers. When the customer’s needs and wants have been identified and understood by the salesperson it is much easier for an appropriate sale to be made in a professional manner.
Forgetting that customers are people first and customers second
We all prefer to do business with people we like. If we want people to like us we must be likeable. This means that, in your relationship with your customers, you must look for the person in the customer and deal with that person on a personal level. This is an attitude that must permeate your business from top to bottom. It requires speaking to customers by name, it means saying “Please” and “Thank You”, it means talking ‘with them’ not ‘at them’. This approach requires a little extra time and a little extra care but the rewards in the long run can be substantial. Remember - good people skills ‘cost’ a little more than poor ones but they make a lot more sales.
(The up-coming post for Friday 30/1 is Nothing changes if nothing changes. It's about the folly of expecting to achieve different results while continuing to do things in the same old way.)
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