Monday, February 23, 2009

Being in the driver's seat

Do you often think:
"Why is this happening to me?"
"If I was in his territory it would be much easier for me"
"If I had started at the same time, I would have been doing the same numbers now"
"That was an easy deal, I would do the same numbers if I had customers like that"
"The system slows me down, that's why my business is slower - I can't make enough calls"
"All the big companies are taken already"

And are you honest to yourself when you keep saying this when your numbers are low?
Are you still saying this to yourself when people that are realistically in the same boat, as they have started at the same time, are beating you on the rankings?

If that's the case, you need to take a hard look at yourself.

Because if you are really honest, you know that you are not making enough calls, or good enough calls. You know that you could prepare your call lists better, rank your customers, manage and organize your customer base, and come in earlier to start making your calls.

There are many things in life that are outside of our control. But this job is not one of them.
What separates the boys from the men is how you take on your job, your life, really.

It is how you react to your environment, how you take ownership and accountability for your actions and performance. If you're at the bottom of the list or if you are not making your dreams come true, you have to work harder, keep going, putting in more energy and discipline.

Here's a good suggestion: You don't have to invent the wheel if others around you are successful.
Look around, ask questions, find out why the people at the top are at the top.
Chances are you will find out that they have worked hard and took control of their destiny, by taking the right actions and sticking with it.

Hard work, perseverence, discipline, setting challenging goals, and doing everything you can to achieve them.

The hard part? Not doing the things that will not lead you to your goal, no matter how much fun they seem at the moment. It takes discipline to get .

You have to be healthy in body and spirit to be a corporate athlete.
You need to eat and sleep well, practise, improve, repeat practise, go through hardships, recover from injuries or defeat in order for you to win a metaphorical medal.

But the good news is: you can do it!
You just need to change your ineffective routines into an effective one.

Change today rather than tomorrow.
Pick up the phone and call 30 new prospects today, follow up on the ones that you haven't followed up with but should have. You know who they are. Internal emails aren't as important as sales. Don't kid yourself when you think that's what you need to do first. You were hired for one thing only: to produce revenue.
So that the company makes money and you make money.

Take you destiny in your own hands and get into the driver's seat.

Why not now?


Let's dial for dollars!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

When deals get delayed...

This was sent to me by Nicola d'Amato - superstar salesman in the Italian market - great info to share with y'all:


Not closing a sale "on time", is almost the same as losing
that sale.

You might think...

"Hey, if I closed the sale, that's great. It doesn't
really matter if I close it this month or next, as long
as it's for the same amount."

Well the truth is a sale delayed by days, weeks, or months
costs you.

It costs you because you have to expend extra selling time
and extra selling energy to close that deal. Energy that
could've gone into working other deals in your pipeline or
into prospecting for new deals. And also it costs you because you can't instantly replace
the revenue you expected to get from that deal.

Traditional selling mentality focuses on the need to "create
a sense of urgency" with your prospect.
Sometimes this can work. But it depends on the cause of the
delay.

If the delay is something beyond your ability to influence,
then doing things like cutting your bid don't speed up your
deal. All they do is tell your prospect that you are willing
to lower your bid, and then they'll demand it later when
they are ready to close.

The better approach is to shoot for an overflowing pipeline
of deals. If you have pipeline full of high quality prospects, with a
high likelihood of making a purchase from *you*, then you
don't have to worry when a deal or two gets delayed.

Now how do you get this pipeline of high quality prospects?

Well you have to be willing to do three things.

You have to be willing to spend more time prospecting than
you probably have in the past. You're going to need to make
more calls, send more letters, emails, LinkedInmails, gifts - whatever works.

You're going to need to sharpen your message so that you get
a higher hit-rate from your communications.

And you're going to need to throw away more weak leads.

You accomplish this by prospecting for pains that you can
solve, and by filtering the hits you do get through a
rigorous qualification process.

A high prospecting activity level focused on finding pains
you can solve combined with qualifying your leads against an
ideal customer profile will result over time in a pipeline
bursting with prospects inclined to purchase from you.

You'll be much more successful fixing your sales problems by
focusing on the decision of who to spend your sales time
with instead of worrying about how to create a sense of
urgency with a poor quality prospect.

Let's dial for dollars!

Stay tuned....

No news .... no new blog?
What's going on?

Redoing the blog - and design.
That's what's going on!

Stay tuned for more....will be with you shortly


Thanks for your patience, happy selling,

stephan