That's a question I'm often asked whenever I'm talking to a group
of salespeople. I'm sure you can empathize with the feelings
behind it. You have new products to learn, paperwork to complete,
hundreds of customer problems to solve, meetings to attend,
inside people to cojole, managers to mollify - and, on top of all
this, you are expected to sell something!
It's hard to do so when you have all these other aspects of your
job howeling for your attention.
How do you manage all of this while at the same time you build
your sales? How do you sort through all of this and focus on the
essentials of your job?
Good question. Let's start by identifying one of those
essentials. Think about the sales process - the activities that
it takes to make a sale - and certain key activities come to
mind. You know that you need to make appointments with qualified
decision makers, to collect information about their needs, to
build relationships, to demonstrate products, to follow up, to
answer questions, etc. Your list of important sales activities is
probably expanding monthly. But if you're going to focus on the
essentials, there is one absolutely necessary activity around
which everything else resolves. All of the other activities are
either means to bring about this activity, or actions that spring
out of this one key activity.
What is it? Making a persuasive offer to your customer. Think of
it as an offer. In its simplest terms, making an offer means
saying something like this to your customer, "Here is this...
(product, service, package, deal, etc.). How about buying it?"
You make an offer whenever you respond to a request for a price.
When you demonstrate a product, you make an offer. When you bring
in a piece of literature and tell your customer about some new
product or service, you make an offer. When you respond to your
customer's request with information about a product or service,
you make an offer. All of these are variations on a theme, but
all of them can be classified as the presentation of an offer.
And those offers are the heart of your job. Without them, you can
sell nothing. Your customers will never buy if you never offer
them something to buy.
It is an unmistakable fact of life that in sales, quantity
counts. In other words, to be successful, you must make a certain
quantity of sales offers. No matter how much skill and
sophistication you apply to your job as a salesperson, you cannot
totally negate the quantity aspect of it. Given two salespeople
in approximately equal territories, or of approximately equal
abilities, the one who makes the greater quantity of sales offers
will generally have better results than the other.
With this in mind, one simple way to cut through all the mass of
things that you have to do is to focus on the essential component
of the sales process - making an appropriate quantity of sales
offers. If you're looking for a simple way to increase your
results, focus on the quantity of sales offers that you make.
Do two things. First, begin to keep track of how many of these
sales offers you make in the course of a week. Initially, don't
worry about what you're presenting, and don't be concerned about
the dollar volume of each potential piece of business. Those are
more sophisticated concerns that can be considered later. For
now, just keep track of how many offers you make. Use a simple
hash mark system in your planner. Each day, make a hash mark for
each offer you presented to a customer. At the end of each week,
add up the number of hash marks.
There is an amazing law of management that states that the
behavior that you measure is the behavior that you get. That
applies to self-management as well. Just the act of keeping track
(measuring) the quantity of sales offers you present will help
you to focus on those essential activities. As you become more
aware of the quantity of sales offers, you'll naturally be drawn
to ways to increase that quantity.
Which brings me to the second thing you need to do. Begin to find
ways to increase the quantity of those sales offers. If you find
yourself averaging five presentations a week, try to increase
that to an average of ten.
When I was a new distributor salesperson, my manager told me that
I oughtto attempt to have at least one new product to present at
every sales call. I thought he probably new better than I did, so
I did what he suggested. At some point along the way, I began to
think in terms of the quantity of sales offers. It occurred to me
that I could double the number of sales offers I made by taking
two or more products in to every sales call. So I began to spend
a little more time preparing my samples and literature each week,
so that I could dramatically increase the quantity of sales
offers I made. That simple strategy was certainly part of my
$1Million a year increase in sales.
It can be for you, too. When you're overwhelmed with too much to
do, and when you're feeling like you're being drawn in a
kaledscope of conflicting directions, focus on the essential part
of your job. Measure and increase the quantity of sales offers
you make. It will keep you close to the heart of your job and
help you focus on the highest priority activities.
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