“Improve sales win-rates through better deal management and paying attention to those that you know.”
~ Miller Heiman

There are only 9 more Selling Days remaining in September and in the Quarter!!!

It is in a salesperson’s nature to get excited about closing new business. Winning a new client is a reason to celebrate. But, when looking for revenue opportunities, sticking close to home can have its advantages. Your current accounts would be a good place to start. You know their business issues, you know why they decided to do business with you in the first place, and you have established relationships. When new leads – and resources – are scarce, the ability to drive new revenue from existing clients can be a great way to help ensure success. Are you confident that you’ve already uncovered the full potential from your existing client base? There are likely current needs your client has that you could be pursuing. You should approach helping an existing client with the same enthusiasm as you approach new clients.

Maintaining strong relationships with current accounts provides two key benefits:

• You retain the existing business
• You uncover new opportunities

This is not accomplished through just periodic check-ins or great customer service after the sale; it requires an ongoing commitment from you, me all of us and as my Pappy use to say, “don’t you forget it.” As opportunities become scarce, competition increases, so are you doing enough to protect that account? In this marketplace you can’t differentiate by product offering, you must differentiate yourself by the way you sell and the unique value you can provide. A salesperson who can understand a client’s business issues and help craft solutions that help the client succeed are valued and rewarded. Differentiate yourself through your ability to be a well-informed, trusted business resource. When you help your clients achieve their objective you both will win and I will never forget that.

 Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

“You can’t solve problems with excuses all your life.”
~ Dave Mattson

There are only 6 more Selling Days left in August and 27 remaining in the Quarter!!!

Making excuses for failures protects our egos boy do I know that one better than most. We have all done it and it seems to help, temporarily. But, making excuses has proved costly in the long run because excuses keep us from facing the truth about ourselves. They keep us from going to work and correcting our mistakes, eliminating our weaknesses, developing our talents, and improving our character.

How have you reacted to past failures? Did you rebel, blame others and circumstances beyond your control, avoid facing uncomfortable circumstances, and live in fear that something worse might happen? Did you chalk them up to bad luck? Did you develop resentments? Did you come to believe that you could never overcome difficult obstacles? Oh yea to all of these.

If this is how you reacted like Wayne has, you have permitted less than successful happenings to affect your life destructively, not only at the time they occurred, but you have given them the power to upset you up to this present moment! What you have not overcome in the past remains to plague you in the present. If you are going to point the finger of blame, point it at the person looking back at you in the mirror. Face your failures, analyze them, and develop a way to achieve better outcomes. Problems, once solved, are gone. Excuses, however, will follow you forever and forever.

Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

“Causes of sales slumps and doing the blocking and tackling that is necessary – the fundamentals.”
~ Bryan Flanagan

There are 10 more Selling Days in August and 31 remaining in the Quarter!!!

Sales slumps: I hate them, don’t you? What causes sales slumps, and what can you do about them?

There are two things that cause slumps, and two ways to get out of those slumps. First: sales slumps are caused because you’ve lost the basics. You stopped doing what you did that made you successful. The second thing that happened is that you’ve lost your passion. That’s right ?- you’ve forgotten why you got into sales to begin with. You’ve developed “stinkin’ thinkin” -? and it’s catching up with you.

How do you get out of a slump? First of all, return to basics. Second, remind yourself why you like selling. That may mean you just recline, read a book, or play a CD. Remember, the sales profession is a top-shelf profession. You put people in a position to win. Now that’s exciting which is why I love it – don’t you?

Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

“Get back to real selling for that is what we do.”
~ Miller Heiman

There are only 12 more Selling Days in August and 33 remaining in the Quarter!!!

Getting leads should always feel like a luxury rather than an entitlement. Marketing’s job is to accelerate the sales cycle. Developing highly qualified leads is absolutely the best way to deliver on this commitment. But business development success ultimately rests on the salesperson and delivering real results should be the number one focus instead of figuring out who to blame. Professional salespeople need to take control of their own destiny and be proactive.

Sure it is a lot easier when you simply respond to a lead and try to build on the momentum that marketing has already created. But often times, clients have done some of their own diagnosis and you may find yourself pigeonholed into answering product-specific questions rather than having a discussion about their business issues. Beginning this dialogue is not a situation where you just wing it. Take the time to develop a Valid Business Reason that will resonate with the client. And no, saying something like, “Mr. Customer, would you like to talk to us about how you can increase productivity and reduce expenses?” will not work. It needs to be specific to the client and it needs to feel a little risky for you to bring up. After all, you are taking a chance that your ideas may not be compelling to the client. If you are not able to get them interested in a discussion then maybe you really don’t have a fit at this time. Getting a dialogue going with the client is not something that happens with a catchy phrase or a smooth answer. It happens when you can quickly demonstrate that you are an expert who understands some of their key issues and you have some ideas to help. This is the risky part. You may not bat a thousand but the conversations that do get traction will certainly be ones where there is some clear common ground.

As salespeople, we are ultimately responsible for our own success. Pointing fingers and worrying about things outside of our control are not strategies that will enable us to hit the objectives we agreed to. So let’s get back to real selling, stay passionate about what we do each and every day and never cheat the company for our customers are counting us. 

Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.” ~ Oliver Goldsmith ( 1730-1774, Writer and Poet )

There are only 16 more Selling Days in August and 37 remaining in the Quarter!!! 

In the category of human achievement there are many antidotes, words of wisdom, and quotes from famous people, some long gone, and some still living. But rather than merely reciting these cool phrases, and motivational hot buttons as I usually do in this space daily, perhaps you and I  should stop talking about it all, stop sitting in committees, stop proposing “what if’s”, and just write down what you have so far, and commit to doing something about it. It’s easy to get ready, to take aim, to go back and get ready again, but sometimes it is most important to just pull the trigger; to start.

You can’t win if you never try, and talk is cheap in business, talk is cheap in  sports, about the only thing talk is good for is the courtroom or the political podium. If you are a politician, perhaps you can keep on talking yourself into a higher office, or if you are a lawyer maybe you can convince the jury that you actually have the better argument for the case. But if you are someone who would like to achieve something in your life, something worthy, then isn’t it about time you go out and do something?

Now then, we both know all the quotes off the top of our heads, and we know all the slogans such as; go for it, or just do it. And yet those words and phrases don’t mean anything if you don’t take action. Look, we all have  people that come to us all day long with ideas, concepts, and even inventions, and I never know what industry they will be in, but generally there’s always an excuse why the individual, group, or business did not act on their innovation.

What good is a great idea sitting on a sketch pad, or on the back burner in the back of your mind, or sitting on a white board with a 20 person committee brainstorming and shouting out ideas, if you are never going to act on a single one of them – tell me that question – or don’t tell me, let me tell you. It is no good, it’s worthless, it’s junk. If you don’t do something about it will never happen.

If you want to achieve anything in life you’ve got to get out and do it, you’ve gotta want it, you have to care, you have to set your sites, and you have to start with passion. Indeed, rather than me continue this article and harp on something you already know to be true, let me end this article right now, and you get off the Internet, stop procrastinating (I said to myself) and go do it. That’s all I have to say.

Go out and have a Great Selling Day and make a difference in at least one person’s life today.