Marketing Campaigns – Page 49

Selling is natural

Sometimes the thing you have been searching far and wide for is hidden in plain sight right in your own tool kit. One such resource is a Self-Management Sales System which you certainly have the ability to create from your own experiences, knowledge base and accumulated data.

Whether or not you had previously accepted the premise that selling comes natural to all of us, believe me it’s true. Why? Because each of us has a unique ability to sell his/her “self” to anyone else when absolutely necessary. Some of you just don’t do it every day. Having said that, read on to identify the keys to building your own dynamic self-management sales system.

Competencies & performance metrics

Identify your essential competencies and performance metrics. If I asked you to list all the essential competencies that YOU are in control of – the ones that are absolutely critical for you to be successful in your sales position…could you do it? For example…

Essential Competency or not?

Converting conversations to appointments? (yes it is)
What about filling out paperwork? No! (That’s a related task)
What about closing ratio? (Sure it is).
Degree of success in turning a first appointment into an opportunity? (absolutely)

Get the picture?

Now, if you truly want to adopt a self-management system that will work FOR you – not against you, you first have to “access” what is an essential competency and what’s merely a related competency. To do this, sit down and list any sales metrics and performance numbers that are inter-related to your competency numbers and your desired revenue results. (Hint: “Sales Cycle” and “Average Revenue” per sale are two.)

Business diagnoses

Can you diagnose your Business on a single sheet of paper? If I ran into you on a train or in an elevator, would you be prepared to tell me what you do (and how it benefits me or those I know) – in under 1 minute… That’s called your 30-second commercial. Most people don’t have one, yet everybody needs one.

One way to understand more of the obvious benefits your products and services bring to the table is to start to view and diagnose your business more scientifically. You will also see how the numbers work and which areas are most important to your short and long-term success.

Ask yourself…What happens if your closing ratio reduces by 30% and your average revenue per sale increases by $2500? How does that affect your desired results?

Write your competency measurements and sales metrics on a sheet of paper. Calculate ratios in line with competencies and average numbers in line with your sales metrics. Assign your revenue object or quota. Play with the numbers and ratios to see how they are inter-related and how they affect each other.

The magic number

Calculate your “magic number.” Not setting enough new appointments on a routine basis is like a colony of subterranean termites slowly eating away at the foundation of most sales organizations. The reason for this is because most of us do not identify how many new appointments are needed on a weekly basis based on individual competency numbers and performance metrics. That’s like diagnosing with blindfolds on.

Every one is different; we all have a “Magic Number.” And it’s personal to only you. If you routinely achieve it, you will routinely meet your desired results. Since it is a dynamic number that changes from week to week, it’s important to understand how it is inter-related with other competency ratios, performance metrics and desired revenue results. It’s important to include your “Magic Number” in your self-management system.

The napkin rule

Train to work pursuant to the “Napkin Rule,” which simply means, putting aside all those sales automation systems for 30 days and keep track of your essential competency and performance metrics on a single napkin. Compute updates daily. Store the napkin in your pocket. When the napkin fills up, transfer it to a legal pad to show month to date.

Have nothing else on the legal pad except your essential competency ratios and sales performance metrics. After 30 business days, transpose the legal pad metrics to your favorite computer software spreadsheet, and track it for 90 days. This simple but powerful “Napkin Rule” will help you become the CEO of your business.

Numbers tell the story

***Oxygen. Money. Done! Any questions?***

Run your numbers, don’t run after quota. In other words, concentrate on your numbers instead of your quota so you can diagnose performance trends before a revenue crisis. Then you have the power to institute strategies and tactics for immediate recovery. Here’s why:

Reaching and exceeding sales quotas consistently has very little to do with product, pricing and competition. But it has everything to do with “Process.”

Identify the core competencies that are necessary to be successful in your sales routine. Then train to Powerful Routines to increase your ratios of effectiveness. Document these meaningful business metrics and review them weekly. Build a simple but dynamic self-management system and outperform your peers and competition while assuring your revenue success.

We hear all the time about all sorts of methods and techniques for closing a deal in sales situations, as well as other approaches that are designed for us salespeople to gain more business with our customers and prospects. While some of these approaches can be useful, there’s just no substitute for what’s considered one the best sales techniques around.

The technique I speak of is building great rapport with your customers and prospects, and having them feel (or better yet, know) that you’re 100% committed to helping them attain their needs, wants, and desires; But this is not how many salespeople are doing it in their own businesses right now, is it?

Frequently people will get into sales because they see it as a way to make big money, but they then fall into the routine of being forceful in their sales approaches, trying to move the customer in the direction that is best for the salesperson, instead of for the customer/prospect.

The unfortunate reality is these salespeople don’t realize their customers can see what they’re up to. Somehow these salespeople feel they’re not telegraphing what they’re doing in any way that can be detected by the customer or prospect they’re working with.

With this in mind, just once I’d like to be in a clothing store and hear a salesperson say to the customer, “You know, that doesn’t look very good on you at all.” Any salesperson that would tell me this would instantly raise their level of credibility! Yet there are a great many salespeople out there trying to steer their prospects towards doing deals that may not be the best ones for the prospects, but they’re the best ones for the salespeople instead.

Those salespeople who still practicing the “me-first” method must know one thing. Once your customer/prospect picks up on this behavior, your relationship with that person is sunk! Now you’ve become just someone who “sells” to them, but they now know that they can’t trust your judgment and opinion. They have to determine whether or not the product or service will work for them completely independent of anything you now say to them.

Let’s face it, the type of salesperson we all want to work with is someone we like; someone who we feel has as their number one priority the best way to serve our needs. When we both like someone and feel they’re committed to serving our best interests, we naturally just feel ourselves wanting to work with them. The same applies for you, too, in your own business.

As an example, do you think if you were the one looking to buy or lease a product or service that you could sense if the rep you were working with had your best interests in mind above his/her own? If your answer to this is “Yes,” don’t you think the same applies with your own customers and prospects, too? Don’t you think they can sense if you’re serving their best interests or looking out for your own commission?

Sometimes, for whatever reason, some of us don’t feel our customers and prospects share our same intuitive qualities in this arena. And it can cost us big time, too, if we haven’t already become the kind of salesperson who always puts their needs before our own. Make sure you’re adept at developing great rapport with your customers and prospects, and make sure they always understand that serving their best interests is constantly your number one priority. Once you’ve mastered this in your own business, people will sense that you’re the best choice they could ever make when it’s time for them to buy. Best of luck to you out in the field.