So You Want To Sell More? It’s Easy!

Don’t we all want to sell more, I know I do, I am sure you do, and good news is that you can.  Now you can do it the hard way, or you can do it the easy way.  Me I don’t like doing things the hard way, don’t get me wrong, I am not lazy, but doing things right doesn’t have to be hard. 

The key challenge or problem with the hard way is that it often involves changing a whole lot of things, usually all at once, and with all the things sales people have to juggle, sudden and major changes are often disruptive, and quickly abandoned. 

The easy way also involves change, but it will involve changing just one thing, so it is manageable, productive, and rewarding.  Ok, ok, I’m not going to string you along, the easy way is to get a hold of your time.  How you allocate your time has the most dramatic impact on you selling success.  I’m making the assumption that you all know how to sell, so if you could practice your craft more, then you will realize more success. 

Now if you think this is too simplistic, think again.  There a re number of studies that suggest that sales people engage in actual selling or activities directly related to selling less than 50% of their time, so if you can take proactive steps to increase the amount of time you sell, you will sell more.  Start the by examining what you need to do to succeed with what you sell.  Just look at how much, percentage wise, you should allocate to each activity needed to close deals. Once you have done that just focus on managing the activities in the time allocated.  Also look at all the crap you do in the course of the day, things like surfing the web, updating your Facebook, getting coffee down the block, talking to your buds, planning the weekend, etc.  Now I am not saying get rid of all the crap, crap is good, I do it, but just make sure that you do a bit less of it. 

Once you do that, you just do the sales related things you always did, in the same proportions, but now you have more to portion it into.

Another thing you need to do is embrace the tools available to you.  Once you get past the neon lights, the real appeal of Sales 2.0 is the ability to reclaim time.  Marketing automation, lead sourcing and nurturing, process automation.  They help you do the “must do” things in a more efficient way, the bottom line is that you can do it with less effort and better.  Looked at differently, these tools free up your time from previously time consuming tedious “must do” things, and allow you to use your time and skills for other, important selling activities.

The frustrating thing, is that often when these productivity tools are introduced, many use the time gained to do more crap.  “Hey, those leads coming in means I don’t have to do that three hours a week, cool, now I can work a bit more on the office football pool, maybe I’ll win now that I can focus.”

Now if you want to take it to the next level, you could take on some skills training, formal training or on your own.  So let say you go out and read a few sales books a year, say three books.  Doesn’t sound like much, but it is said that the average sales person, (I know you are not average), reads at best one sales book a year; read three and you can like Superman, better yet, Lex Luthor.  Now take this newly acquired knowledge, (the headaches will pass), and apply them “more” in the time you gain by making full use of the tools available to you and cutting out some, not all, crap.

So it’s up to you, you can go out and take on big things, change this, change that, hope that the new way doesn’t take too long to stick, cause if it does, that is time you can’t get back, ever, (talk about crap, ha).  Or you can step back, and free up some time to do more of what you already do well.  And hey, you can start this weekend when we play with our clocks anyways, make use of it.

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