Archives for January 2018

The first rule of holes is that if you are in one stop digging. Similarly, the first rule of ruts is if you are in one do something different. Do anything different. Not just a little different … a lot different. Double the amount of calls you try to make in a day. Radically change your schedule for a week. Wake up earlier … work later … skip lunch …change how you describe your product …change the order in which you ask the questions … review your notes from your last sales training class (you may have to dust them off first) … ask some of the questions you were taught to ask but have stopped asking for some reason …ask a question you have never asked before … change the level at which you call in a company …change the way you start a prospecting call …ask someone you have never asked for a referral.
What you will find is that different stuff starts to happen. You have to react differently. You find yourself in a different place. You will find that your energy level changes and your results will change. You won’t be beating your head against the same walls and in most cases you will have better results, be earning more money and the rut will become a distant memory.

People tend to live up to (or down to) the expectations of people that they respect and who they want to earn approval from. Sometimes you can get trapped in a situation where you are the best salesperson on a weak sales team. Management thinks highly of you and you win salesperson of the month awards regularly. But their expectation of you may be too low. What if you worked on another team where you consistently came in the middle of the pack, but management’s expectation of you was much higher and to you it seemed out of reach? How would you react? If you have a winner’s mentality, then you will work harder seek help, or do whatever it took to reach or achieve what is expected of you. So the lesson here is not to be trapped by the low expectation of others. Whatever you are achieving now, expect to do more. Expect to earn more. Expect to do it in less time. Expect more and you will achieve more.

For those of you who track your sales activity (an admittedly small group), now is a great time to analyze the activity you collected last year to determine if your current level activity will get you to the undoubtedly higher goals that you have set this year. Is your closing rate high enough? Are you scheduling enough appointments? At the current rate of uncovering qualified opportunities will you be able to write enough business to meet the goal if your current close rate holds? Is your average sales high enough? You should have enough data to answer all of these questions (if you don’t that is a whole other issue and you should start collecting the data).
If the analysis shows that you will not be able to hit the goals for this year at the current activity level, you will have to make some changes. Here are some possible remedies:
• Make more calls and talk to more people
• Qualify harder to eliminate quoting deals you know you have a low probability of winning.
• Stop calling on smaller clients to increase your average sales and increase the time you have to work with more profitable prospects.
• Improve your sales skills by reading a book, getting a coach or taking a course.
• Do all of the above.