How do you measure sales success? Do you require your (self|sales team), to make a certain amount of prospecting calls, of demo's, etc? Do you know how long it normally takes from start to close? Do you know the profitability by sales person?

We know that what gets measured get's done. What are you measuring that your sales people have to accomplish?

Have you thought about what is getting in the way of your sales people? Say, maybe they are hitting their numbers so you won't need to read the rest of this paragraph. On the other hand, maybe they are not and you are concerned this trend my continue through all of 2006. It is not too late to challenge them and find out what they think is standing between them and success. One of the first things you want to be very clear about is what your definition of success for each of your sales people might be. You probably don't have the same expectations for each sales person, but you should be very clear in your own mind about the minimum behavioral performance a sales person in your organization is expected to reach within a certain introductory period in their employment.

You might want to know how many calls each sales person is making each week. What is their closing rate? Their average sales figure. The number of days between the first call and the closed deal. By taking a look at these numbers for each of your sales people you might be able to help your sales people design a plan for improving their behaviors. It is unfair to expect people take responsibility for something they cannot control. No one can control sales. What they can control is behaviors that lead to sales. Sales people who want to increase sales might be very frustrated until they make the connection between their daily behaviors and their sales. The best thing a sales manager can do for a sales person is to help them get very clear about not only the connection between behaviors and sales, but the precise numerical relation between specific behaviors and sales. We call that a cookbook. Helping people create their cookbook will help them discover the things that are getting in the way of their success. And when they know that, they can take steps to remove them, but only if they want to.

 

Jeremy Rawitz

jr@salesstrategycorp.com

Are you doing better than last year? We have an expression in Sandler: "A lot of people who say they have been in sales for ten years have really been in sales for one year, just ten times." In other words, they pretty much do what they do each year, getting slightly different results -- some years up, some years down -- but always within a tight range.

If you are not improving EVERY SINGLE YEAR, then you are missing a great opportunity, and leaving enormous money "on the table" that is yours for the taking. It takes courage to grow and change; it takes a PLAN to grow and change; and it takes HELP to grow and change.

Are you up for it!

--- Rich Isaac, richardi@legend-development.com, 631-231-3538

Last prospecting tip for the week...

Jeremy is STILL away in some rain forest somewhere, so it's still me. (Jeremy... get back to work already!!)

Anyway, I mentioned yesterday that you need to have a process for asking for referrals that actually gets someone to REALLY think of people and REALLY set the stage for them to introduce you. I could write a book on the subject, but for blogging sake, I'll give you one key idea...

Write an "ideal client profile". This document describes in detail the kind of folks you want to meet. It can include industries, titles, roles, locations, company sizes, and other stuff. You can then share this document with your clients and other potential referral sources. By looking at it together with you, it allows them to open the "file cabinet" that they have in their brain of people they know, and ideas start spilling out. You'll find that asking for referrals without such a document usually yields zero or maybe one name. This method usually yields three to SEVEN names and ideas. Among those names is often several potential referrals.

Have a great weekend.

Rich Isaac
631-231-3538
richardi@legend-development.com

And yet another in this week's Prospecting Tips:

So yesterday I talked about referrals. Well, how do you actually GET them? If you do a great job, you will get some "passively". Someone will call you and tell you that they heard you are wonderful. But most people don't get enough in this way. They have to ASK for them.

Let's test your ESP, your mind-reading ability. If you ask a happy client if they might know anyone else who could use your services, what will the response be? Come on, Kreskin, you know! You guessed it: "I can't think of anyone now, but if I do, I'll let you know." Actually, the only one thinking about it at that point is YOU. They'll forget about it as soon as you are out of sight.

So you need to have a different process that works better than just asking...

Stay tuned for more...

Rich Isaac
631-231-3538
richardi@legend-development.com

And yet another in this week's Prospecting Tips:

Regardless of what your mix of prospecting is, a great strategy for many businesses is to always be moving toward a 100% referral based business. If may take some time to get there; in fact, you may never get there. But it always makes sense to maximize referrals and introductions as a means of growing the business.

Why? Because prospects that you have been referred to (or who have been referred to you) are DRAMATICALLY more likely to become a client than those you found another way. This can make it feel almost effortless to grow the business with ideal accounts.

Over the next few days, I'll give you some specific tips for generating referrals and introductions.

Rich Isaac
631-231-3538
richardi@legend-development.com