A good sales plan establishes goals, priorities, timetables, and necessary resources. A sales plan that will achieve your ends has these characteristics:

1. Sets measurable, specific, vivid, and motivating goals. Where do you intend to be in one year? What measures will you use to gauge your achievements: Number of buyers contacted? Percentage of sales to certain types of customers? Sales volume? Profit? Ranking among your peers?
2. Identifies the enabling objectives necessary to achieve ultimate goals. What objectives must you reach on the way to the intended outcome? What new work habits must you develop? What values will you need to embrace?
3. Outlines a logical order among the intermediate steps. What is the logical sequence for achieving your ultimate goal? What must happen first, second, third, and so on?
4. Establishes a reasonable yet challenging time line. When will you achieve your ultimate goal? When will you jump the intermediate hurdles?
5. Pinpoints the barriers between you and your objectives. Why haven’t you been achieving your objectives? What are the constraining forces, either in you or in the environment? What has stood in the way?
6. Specifies strategies, procedures, and tactics. What actions will overcome the barriers that have kept you from achieving your objectives?
7. Summarizes the resources needed. What money, materials, supplies, equipment, facilities, information, education, training, support, counsel, or staffing do you require?
8. Establishes accountability. What will you do to hold your feet to the fire?
9. Is in writing. Plans not written are dreams. Plans written become vows. Don’t just dream about success, vow to succeed.
10. Is shared and negotiated with those responsible for implementing it. The more people who see your plan, the more pressure you’ll feel to make it happen.
11. Signifies commitment. Start your plan only once you become totally confident in it and fully committed to it.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved

Jeremy Rawitz.

Have you stopped to think how much the word "IF" is worth? Judging by the way many professionals talk, it must be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example:

• "If I had only gotten there sooner..."
• "If our prices were only more competitive..."
• "If the economy wasn't so volatile..."
• "If the competition wasn't so stiff..."
• "If only they would return my calls..."

The list is endless. "IF" appears to account for more missed opportunities than one could imagine.

The professional salesperson can't and wouldn't blame a missed sale on any of the above "IF" conditions. A more likely set of "IFs" would be:

• "If I had only planned more specifically what I wanted to accomplish on this sales call..."
• "If I had set an agenda for the meeting with my prospect up-front..."
• "If I had only discussed all the money issues with my prospect earlier in the selling process..."
• "If I had taken the time to listen to what my prospect was telling me, rather than being so concerned about what I wanted to tell him."

This list too can be very lengthy. The most important "IF" is:

"If I would only take responsibility for my actions, then I would understand that sometimes the results will be unfavorable, but in the long run I will be better off. I will be in control, my confidence and self-esteem will grow, my knowledge will expand, I will gain new courage, my sales will improve, and I will be looked upon as a true sales professional."

Yes, "IF" is worth a great deal of money. Whether that money is in your bank account or someone else's will be determined by the way in which you look at "IFs." Are they externalized excuses over which you supposedly have no control, or are they internal conditions over which you have an absolute control?

Be careful how you answer. Remember, it's worth a lot of money!

Call me, Jeremy Rawitz at 347-385-8500 to attend a class.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all waste a lot of time on activities that DO NOT further our sales process. Spend time on sales related activites and you will sell more. Here's how to keep it in perspective:

Watch what you do.

Pay Time Activities - The Big Three are: Prospecting, Selling, Delivering (Servicing). These things should be scheduled during the hours your customers are available.

Non Pay Time Activities - writing proposals, research, e- mail, and checking out competitors should be done during off hours Stay on goal time, not clock time. The purpose of your work day is to accomplish goals, whether they take one hour, or eight hours. When you've accomplished the day's goals, stop working; go home to your family, play golf, or simply reward yourself for the success.

Keep your business out of the red by making sure that a majority of your day is spent in Pay Time. As Thomas Edison once said, "Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose."

Wishing you Good Selling! Copyright Sandler Sales Institute

Jeremy Rawitz

During the sales call, do you explain the key features and unique aspects of your product or service in an attempt to educate your prospect and establish your credibility, only to find yourself handling an objection for nearly every point you make? Do you “overcome” each objection only to have another one leveled at you?

Do you expertly present your industry and product knowledge to capture prospects’ interest and create enthusiasm for your product but still have to deal with delays and put-offs?

Do your prospects see your “closes” coming and skillfully evade them?

At the end of your sales calls, do your prospects know more about you and your product or service than you know about them? Are you unaware of how they perceive salespeople, their preferences for doing business, why they would choose one vendor or supplier over another, what they’ve tried in the past, what has worked and what hasn’t?

When you’re back at the office, do you find yourself trying to figure out some critical elements about a prospect’s real needs, financial resources, decision process, or level of commitment to purchase your product or service?

Are you unsure why some prospects buy from you and why others don’t?

Deep down, are you disappointed with the result of all your hard work?

If you answered “yes” to some, or perhaps all, of the above questions, then you are most likely sabotaging your own efforts.

How can that be? You most likely talk too much during your sales calls – especially during the early stages. While it’s important for your prospects to know about your product or service, your company, and you, it’s equally important, if not more so, for you to know about them – why they want or need your product or service, why they would buy it from you as opposed to one of your competitors, what resources they have available to purchase your product, how they would go about making a decision to do so, and their expectations for doing business.

Don’t be so quick to educate your prospects. Learn to ask questions and gather information first. There will be plenty of time later to educate them if they qualify for an eventual presentation.

Stop handling stalls and objections. Identify the issues around which the typical stalls and objections revolve and bring them up early in the call. If one or more of them will become a real road block to completing a sale, it’s better to deal with it sooner rather than later.

Don’t fall into the technique trap. Trial closes – impending event, conditions of satisfaction, Ben Franklin, etc. – don’t close sales; they precipitate objections and stalls. The prospect has seen and heard all of them before and is well prepared to resist them. Closing a sale is the result of mutual agreement between the prospect and salesperson to continue the process from the initial contact to an ultimate presentation. The process may stop at any point if it is no longer mutually beneficial for the parties. If they both agree to continue, a buying decision will be made.

If you want to stop sabotaging your efforts, you must first accept that you will have to make some changes. Don’t let your fears (“Oh, I could never ask a prospect that”) or your existing beliefs (“Prospects aren’t going to reveal that information even if I ask”) handicap and prevent you from breaking through your barriers to a greater level of success.

Also, you must be willing to exercise your rights. Yes, salespeople have rights, too! You have the right to the truth, even though sometimes it’s not what you want to hear. You have the right to ask questions to determine where you are in the selling process and what’s going to happen next. You have the right to determine early in the process if there is a real business opportunity for you. You have the right to determine where and with whom to invest your time.

Be willing to step outside your comfort zone. Change isn’t always easy. But, the short-term discomfort will be worth the trade-off of greater long-term success.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sales Strategy Corp. 347-385-8500 - Jeremy Rawitz

Without a doubt prospecting is the number one problem for sales people. We spend plenty of time "trying" to close business. Probably because once we find someone with any interest at all we can feel comfortable with giving them plenty of reason's to buy.

Even when we get the "I need to think it over" reply, we would rather wait for them to "think it over" than go find someone new to speak with.

It’s the effort of finding someone new to speak with that is the biggest problem. If you want to be more successful in sales, go out and find more people to speak with. Lots of them!

There is little argument that prospecting is one of the disciplines a salesperson must master. Perhaps the most important discipline. Why then is it the one least understood and most often neglected? The most likely reason is that prospecting takes place at the beginning of the selling cycle, but the reward for the time and effort invested are at the end of that cycle.

Many times, your prospecting efforts result in little or no gain at all. You must walk through many doors before finding one person with enough curiosity, let alone sincere interest, to talk with you. You disqualify several suspects before finding one real prospect that eventually becomes your new client or customer.

You can view prospecting from one of two perspectives: An activity filled with frustration and disappointment, or a journey where each unproductive step gets you closer to your ultimate goal and success. The choice is yours. Love it or hate it....just do it.

Come to an Open House January 26th from 9 to 11 am.  To register go to www.ssc.sandler.com

Jeremy Rawitz

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.