An observation of sales organizations operating at maximum capacity reveals a common strategy: They track their business development efforts.

I’m not talking about tracking their opportunity pipeline or revenue. These successful companies track the activities they perform to find new clients such as the number of times they ask for a referral, make a prospecting call, attend a networking event, speak at an association, or have an appointment with a new prospect.

Why is something as simple as tracking activity so important? Perhaps it’s because you can’t tell where you're going unless you know where you are.

Following are some reasons to track your business development activities.

• Regardless of your closing skill, you’ll never generate substantial revenue if you’re not talking to a substantial number of new prospects. Tracking your prospecting activities and measuring them against new sales will tell you if you’re making progress.
• Tracking the number and frequency of successful activities creates a roadmap for others to follow. Handing new hires a template for success will help them get a jump start.
• Tracking activity holds people accountable for effort, independent of expertise.
• Tracking allows you to analyze what’s working and what’s not. Tracking new business development activities is not a magic bullet to success, but it just might be the something extra that puts you ahead of your competition.

Join us for a class on August 18th from 9 to 11 am. Call the number below.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

Sales Strategy Corp.

347-385-8500

How many sales are you hoping will close between now and the end of the month? If you get 90% of what is in your pipeline, will it make you happy? If you get 10% will it make you sad?

Obviously we want to close as much business as possible. Ironically that desire is what may be causing us to fall short of our abilities. You see when we become emotionally involved in a selling opportunity it causes us to "HOPE" which can derail our process. I recently lost an opportunity to make a sale to a friend. I thought because we have a professional friendship, I did not have to follow my defined selling process.

Guess what, I got emotionally involved and when it appeared I was not going to get the business I said things like, "You are a friend and I just want to help you". Guess how that made her feel?

If you want to improve your sales and even more importantly, how you feel about yourself at the end of the selling opportunity, leave your emotions at the curb.

On a sales call, especially a prospecting call, you must be emotionally unattached to the outcome.

If you become attached to the goal of turning every prospect into a customer, you will surely be disappointed. Disappointment leads to frustration, which can lead to procrastination -- and so, the downward spiral begins.

Selling is a sorting process. Initially, you separate out the unqualified prospects (suspects) and retain the qualified ones.

Next, you sort out the prospects who are qualified to graduate to the customer level from those who aren’t. Obviously, the goal is to have as many prospects as possible reach the customer level. However, many won’t make it.

So, be “attached” to the process, not the outcome. As long as you focus on and work the process, the desirable outcome will follow.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500

When you really want (or possibly need) to close a sale, it’s easy to drop into “convincing” mode. You begin to sound like the stereotypical “high-pressure” salesperson explaining the benefits of the various features of your product or service and “justifying” the costs.

These are precisely the things you shouldn’t be doing. Why? Because, when you drop into “convincing” mode, you talk too much --- which will decrease your chance to closing the sale quickly, or perhaps closing it all.

Less is more --- relevant. Prospects don’t need to know everything about your product or service, only those aspects that directly address their concerns, problems, issues, goals, and objectives.

Overloading them with additional information may raise doubts or bring to the surface additional elements they need to “think about.”

During a sales call, the objective is to help prospects discover how you can help them solve their problems, meet their challenges and reach their goals, not tell them. Learn to educate with questions and third-party stories.

Also, recognize when the sale is made, and then stop “selling.” Salespeople who talk too much soon become victims of the 5/55 rule --- they make the sale in the first 5 minutes of the meeting, and then spend the next 55 minutes “buying” it back.

Once the prospect has made a buying decision, trying to reinforce the decision by adding additional information will most often do more harm than good.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500

Do you need to "Think It Over" every time you buy something?

There is a very strong correlation (about 100%) between your own buying habits and the behavior you will tolerate from a prospect. If you constantly:

• shop around town for the best deal;
• gather lots of proposals before making a decision;
• or give salespeople lifetime subscriptions to your voicemail;

then don't be surprised when you find prospects doing those things to you.

If you are weak at making decisions, you will empathize with a prospect when he says, "Hey, this looks great, we'll discuss it and get back to you next week!" You'll be thinking subconsciously, "Makes sense; if I were getting ready to spend a lot, I'd want to think it over too." Instead of wimping out at this point, you should politely say, "Mr. Prospect, we both agreed that you would give me a decision at the conclusion of my presentation; either a No or a Yes is OK but thinking it over is something we said would not happen." This way, you won't be falling victim to another episode of Unpaid Consulting.

If you want to improve your ability to get decisions from your prospects, then resolve right now never to give a salesperson another "think it over." The next time you are the buyer, look the salesperson in the eye and say, "Yes" or "No." Improve your ability to MAKE decisions and you'll automatically improve your ability to GET decisions.

Wishing you Good Selling.

Copyright Sandler Sales Institute. 

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500

In the normal course of business, things slip through the cracks. Sometimes those “things” are your prospects:

• An appointment needed to be moved, but it was never rescheduled.
• You met someone at a networking event who said, “We should get together,” but an appointment was never set.
• Someone requested information, but you couldn’t immediately get them on the phone and they were forgotten.
• You were given a referral, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to contact them, they, too, were forgotten.

Once you’ve identified the ones who got away, commit to contacting them within the next week.

Whatever it takes --- a phone call, an e-mail, or a knock on the door --- make the contact and qualify them and schedule an appointment or disqualify them and ask for a referral.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500