Jeff Garrison

Sales and Going Through the Motions

I hate to say it, but sometimes I need a reminder to follow my own advice and Sales Habitudes.  Today it was about preparation. 

I have a 2010 business plan.  This is broken down into a ninety day plan that I update at the end of each month.  Every Sunday I review the plan and set my top priorities for the week.  At the end of each day, I review my plan for the next day and schedule all of my tasks giving myself deadlines throughout the day.  In short, I execute.

When it comes to making phone calls, I prepare for each call to maximize the opportunity.  If it is the first time I am going to call you, I will have reviewed your website and your Linked In profile.  I will look to see if you Tweet and I will Google your name.  Finally, I will determine the outcome that I would like to achieve on the phone call and the questions I would like to ask you.

This does not take too long and because I do it, I don't have to make as many calls as someone who does not do it.

Well today, I was in the groove and called someone without preparing.  I got their voice mail.  No big deal, right?

Two hours later this person whom I had not spoken to before called back.  I was totally clumsy on this call trying to figure out what to ask next.  You know ... there were those uncomfortable silences.

In a nutshell, I behaved like an amateur.

Well, like every other endeavor, your performance is only as good as your preparation.  Going through the motions on the phone, at a networking event, in a sales meeting, daily planning, and even the informal coffee meetings is amateurish.  Amateurs by definition, do not get paid for their work.

If you want to get paid like a pro, prepare like a pro.  If you want to get paid like a world class pro, prepare like you are world class.

How do you prepare to perform at your best?

Photo on flickr by stephen le

What is the Number One Mistake Sales People Make?

This was a question asked by Tracy Johnson, a member or the Linked In group Sales Gravy.  Close to 100 sales professionals have posted their thoughts on this question in the last month.  Most of those listed one of the following as the number one mistake.

•    Poor listening skills
•    Poor follow-up
•    Not qualifying prospects
•    Failing to keep the pipeline full
•    Failing to ask good questions
•    Failing to ask for the business
•    Poor planning
•    Poor handling (or no handling) of objections
•    No passion

With the exception of the last one, all of these things fall into one big category.

Failure to Execute a Good Business Development Process!

A good sales process should document what to do, how to do it, and when as it regards lead generation, lead nurturing, and the sales process.  It should also include a way to track results and make adjustments along the way.

Since I love sports analogies and the NFL, here is one way to look at it.

The lead generation and lead nurturing process is like the preparation and practice that an NFL team will go through each week before a game.  Their entire week is scripted.  Team meetings are the same time on the same day each week.  The same "on the field" practice and game preparation methods are done at the same time on the same day each week.  (Of course the actual activity may vary based upon the game plan for the week.)

Whether you are in a large business or a sole proprietor, you need to have a consistent schedule wherein you execute the same lead nurturing and lead generation activities every week.  This consistency and professionalism is what keeps the pipeline full.

Game time is like the sales call.  The NFL team goes in with a game plan that they intend to execute.  However, within that game plan there are all kinds of contingencies that they have planned for and practiced.  In other words, they know how to instantly respond to each situation as it is occurring.

The sales process is the same.  The sales person is prepared to ask the right questions.  They are prepared to listen to the answers.  They are prepared to respond to the different issues a prospect may bring up.  They are prepared to ask for the next appointment or the sale.  They know how to follow up when it is over.

Does this sound like a lot of work?  It is a lot of work to build the process and to establish the habit of execution.  But like the NFL, business and sales is not a recreational sport. 

Play to win or don't play at all!

If you have questions about how to establish executable Sales Habitudes for your business, please contact me.

Sales Goal Setting

My approach to goal setting may be a bit different than most and I am sure to get emails and comments.

Start by Setting Low Goals!

This is especially effective if you are a business owner trying to fit business development in to your everyday chaos.

Follow This Plan

First of all, you can only control activity, not outcomes.  So don't plan outcomes.  For example, don't plan to "schedule a meeting" with a client, plan to "call them for an appointment".

Identify the daily sales activities that you must do on a daily basis to succeed.  (Email me for a free list if your are not sure where to start.)  For tomorrow, make a plan that includes these activities, but make the level of activity so low you can't fail to complete the plan.  When you execute your plan, give yourself an appropriate reward.  (I crack open a Guinness.)

After a few days, increase the amount of activity that you plan by a little bit.  Get it done and reward yourself. 

Over time, keep increasing the amount of activity until you discover a your daily maximum.

Here are the reasons I suggest this plan of action.

You Need to Build Planning Muscles.

If the failure to plan is not the number one reason that sales people fail, it is at least in the top two or three.  If you don't plan and schedule your sales activity each day, then eventually you will fail.  On the flip side, if you plan too much and don't execute them, you also fail. Either way, planning is not working for you!

This method helps you to establish the habit of planning.  You also learn the skill of making a realistic plan based upon the amount of time that you have.  Some days you will know going in that you have less time than other days for sales activity and you can plan appropriately.

Note that it should be the rare exception that you don't plan at least a bit of business development activity every day.  Just like going to the gym once every week or two won't get you in great shape, inconsistent sales activity barely gets any results.

You Need to Build Execution Muscles

Lots of business owners and sales people tell me they plan, but when I look at their plans, I see a lot of activity on today's plan carried over from yesterday.  They have no idea what is realistic because their plan is really just a giant to do list.

Finish your daily plan daily!  By the way, the last activity on the daily plan ought to be to plan for tomorrow. 

You Need to Build Positive Associations with Planning and Execution

I don't care how easy your plan is to accomplish. If you plan five days in a row and execute the plan every day, you will have done something that only a small percentage of business owners and sales people have ever done. 

You should feel great about yourself!

You Need to Build Your Confidence in Planning and Execution

Keep planning and executing every day and you will quickly start to see consistent results in terms of business development and sales.  After three months to six months, planning will be as habitual as brushing your teeth.  If you realize you forgot to plan, you may feel compelled to get out of bed to make your plan.

Finally, You Will Have Build a Pattern of Successful Planning and Execution

You may be thinking you don't have time to set low goals.  "Low" is subjective.  Just don't set daily activity goals that you will fail to execute more than 10% of the time.

You may be thinking that you can't afford to wait for your sales people to build their muscles.  Wrong, you can't afford to have them setting themselves up for failure most days.  Following this plan will foster the development of sales people that are far more effective, reliable, and happier than those of your competitors.

Tell me your thoughts.  Is this crazy or might it just work?

Do you have a daily sales plan?

Managing Sales Activity for Success

Discover how to Explode Sales for the Small Business and Sales Professionals with Sales Habitudes! 

Follow Up Failure

There are many opportunities for follow up failure.  For example ...

• Do you have business cards from people you recently met sitting in a pile waiting for you to take some action? 
• Do you have a list of people that you considered good prospects at one time but after the first couple of follow ups, you moved on? 
• Do you have customers who bought from you once, but you have not touched base with in some time?

Me too. 

But I have had prospects that for whatever reason I maintained good follow up practices.  Many of them have been converted to clients. So what have I learned?

Prospects and customers buy when they are ready to buy, not when we are ready to sell!

In fact, many prospects need to be followed up with anywhere from seven to twelve times to be converted to customers.  So, this begs the question ...

How many times do you follow up with a prospect (or a past customer) before giving up?

The average is probably between two and three times if we were honest.

Why?

We focus on making sales now!  We have to meet monthly or quarterly quotas and nurturing a sale that may or may not happen several months from now is irrelevant if we can't produce now.  Additionally, even if we wanted to maintain disciplined follow up and lead nurturing practices, there is just too much to stay on top of.

I get it.  But what if you could increase your sales by 25%, 50%, or 100% over the next twelve months?  Would you make changes?

This is what inbound marketing and sales 2.0 are all about and these things should be implemented into every business.  If you don't have the resources to hire a sales coach or consultant who has expertise in these things, start small.

For example, schedule an hour per week just to make follow-up calls or send e-mails to past prospects.  Find ways to provide information to them over time so that when they are ready to buy, they will buy from you. 

To learn more about fixing your follow up, click on the link to receive the free ebook called The Edge of Success.

Encourage others to follow up.  Share your follow up stories in the comments section below.

Sales Compensation Systems

A question we get all the time is "how should we compensate our sales people."  Those asking fit into one of two categories.

1. They are hiring their first sales people and have no experience with incentive based sales compensation systems
2. They are frustrated with the production in general of their sales staff and they want to see if a tweak in their sales compensation system will make the difference.

There are a ton of ways to go about it and no one way is best.  However, there are some things to keep in mind when creating an incentive compensation system. 

For this post, I consulted with my father Ed Garrison.  He has been consulting for three decades with senior leaders in the financial services industry and has seen more convoluted sales compensation systems than most people alive today.

Here are a few of the things he would tell you.

1. Keep it simple.  If the salesperson has a difficult time understanding what they have to do to reach their personal goals, it can be demotivating.
2. Make sure that you understand what you want your sales people to do before you create incentives.  If not done carefully, people may behave in ways that you did not foresee.
3. You can't motivate lazy or undisciplined sales people by offering higher commission.  It only increases your cost of carrying a poor performer.
4. You can't increase performance of a poorly trained sales person by offering higher commission.  Spend the money on training instead.
5. You can't get a sustained increase in sales of a poor product or service by increasing commission.  Spend the money to improve the product or service value.
6. Sales people are not purely motivated by the commission.  They are also motivated by things like serving their clients and recognition for their accomplishments.
7. When hiring, it is generally better to decide upon your compensation structure before beginning to interview.  If you get very excited about a prospective job candidate, you may be too generous with compensation.
8. Don't cut commissions unless you can afford to lose your best salespeople.

What is your experience with good and bad systems?  What pieces of advice would you add to the list?

Photo on flickr by mysavingtips

 

No Guessing in Sales!

When my sales staff used to come and tell me about a new prospect, I would always have several questions for them.  I knew a cardinal rule had been violated if their answers began with ...

• "I guess..."
• "I think..."
• "I believe..."
• "Um"

What is that rule?  No Guessing!

The reason for no guessing is that the question unasked and the answer assumed are the primary causes of poor conversion rates (the ability to move prospects through the sales process and to make sales).

Don't guess...

• What problems your prospect may have!
• What opportunities your prospect may have!
• What resources they have available to solve their problems or take advantage of opportunities!
• How they want to work with your company!
• What criteria they will use to evaluate your solutions!
• What the ultimate value is to solving a problem or capturing an opportunitiy!
• How and who will make final purchasing decisions!
• Whether or not thee are competing perspectives inside a prospect company!
• What is the timeline for finding a solution?

If you are indeed focused on helping your prospects succeed, then you are obligated to not guess.  After all, how can you propose the best solution if you don't know the answers to those things mentioned above as well as many other things?

What are signs of guessing?  The prospect...

• does not return your call at some point during the process
• rejects your proposal and you do not know why
• chooses a competitor and you do not know why
• keeps telling you they have not made a decision (which is worse than no)

Of course, the biggest sign of guessing is that you don't feel confident that your prospect will like your proposed solution.

The best advice I ever got was to be bold enough to ask everything I need to know to serve my prospect.  Here is why this is such brilliant advice.  We don't ask because we are afraid the prospect won't want to divulge too much information.  But when we ask something sensitive, the prospect must decide right then and there if they are going to trust us.  For those who are truly sincere about helping their clients, the prospect will almost always choose to trust.

How have you been surprised by how open prospects are when they know you are sincere?

Photo on flickr by misallphoto

What is the Biggest Mistake Sales People Make?

I was asked at a networking event what is the most common mistake that sales people make?  That's an easy question to answer.  Most sales people don't follow any kind of framework or system.

Traffic Analogy

The lack of a sales framework or system is like driving to a destination without a map in a city that you don't know very well.  You may know generally where you are going such as "towards downtown," but you may not know when to go left or right.  You may drive in circles.  You may run into traffic or streets closed for construction.  You may get low on gas.  It takes much longer than it needs to and ultimately, you may never find your destination.

Having a sales framework or system is like driving with a GPS navigation system.  You know exactly how you are going to get where you are going and you know just about how long it will take.  It is easier to avoid traffic and streets closed for construction.  And if you should miss a turn, the navigation system will quickly reroute you and get you back on course.

Example

One of the biggest problems that sales people encounter by not following a system is "premature solution."  If a salesperson begins talking about solutions (i.e., products or services) to a prospect before they fully understand

• the scope of issues and opportunities their prospect may have
• the resources available to the prospect
• and their criteria and process for making a decision

then they suffer from "premature solution."

Symptoms of premature solution include:

• you have had one appointment with the prospect, but you can't get a follow up appointment scheduled
• after you have told them everything about your products or services, the prospect is not very forthcoming with the information you need to prepare a proposal
• their first response is that your solution is too expensive
• after giving the client a proposal they won't call you back
• they keep telling you they are almost ready to do something but won't move forward

The cure for premature solution is to develop a framework for conducting intelligent, productive conversations with prospects about their situation rather than "product demonstration" conversations.

Creating a framework or system for yourself can also cure or cut down on a lot of other issues that are preventing you from developing more business. 

How have mapping out your process improved your sales?

Photo on flicr by twenty questions

Sales Habitudes on Realization Nation

Yesterday I was a guest on Jason Kiesau's Realization Nation.  Check out the broadcast and our discussion of sales and Sales Habitudes.

 

Leave Your Value Proposition at the Office

I know this sounds nuts after you have spent so much time crafting your elevator statement and practicing just how to position your unique product or service.  However, I am just talking about you first meeting (or perhaps the first few meetings) with a new prospect.

You have the meeting because the prospect has already determined that there is value in this initial investment of time with you.  At this point, don't keep selling.  It does not add value to your prospect.

What adds value to your prospect at this point in the sales process is your ability to ask provocative questions.

Listen to the answers.  Ask more questions.  Tell the prospect in your own words what you have learned about the exciting opportunities and issues and concerns with which he or she is dealing.

In other words, seek first to understand everything you can about your prospect. 

When understanding is achieved, your prospect will want to know about your product or service and you can tell them within the context of the "understanding" you have achieved about their business.  You can discuss an "exact" solution rather than the general value proposition that you left at the office.

This conversation is easier to describe than it is to achieve.  The prospect might be more comfortable asking you about your business.  It is hard to not start selling at this point.  You need to tactfully turn the spotlight back on the prospect.  It takes planning and practice to do it well, but it must be done to serve your market best.

What do you do to keep the focus on your prospect.?

Photo on flickr by Benoit