ummm…. so March sales?

Please stop telling me about your stupid pipeline.  I know you have all the answers teed up for me.  I don’t give a @#$%…

I’m not your mom or you sales manager so stop pitching me on how amazing your three month selling cycle is.  Frankly I don’t care.

I am sure your pipeline is magical.

By the way, can I go back to that word “pipeline”?  Of all the major “P” words that play into a selling discussion:

…..Presentation

……….Pitch

……………Practice

………………..Process

…………………….”Pain” points

…………………………Professionalism

……………………………..Poise

There is a word that I don’t often hear — people.

In case you are not quite sure what I am getting at, take a look at your rolodex.  It’s all those dudes…

Sadly, your sales force automation platform screaming at you in your local web browser doesn’t give a crap either.  Sure there are a nice couple of fields there to put in first and last names and possibly a birth date.  (oooh…. maybe you can even put in a Twitter name)/

<whatever…..>

But your platform (which by the way, I understand your sales manager is stalkerishly addicted to) isn’t the road map to predictably building a kick-ass solution in March right now pre-Christmas.

It’s people…  You. Them. Us.

People relate.  People object.  People buy.

It’s people that we need to focus on.

The mathematics of making sure you maximize your time and attention are givens.  I am guessing that if you have read this far that you have mastered the art of engineering your schedule to predict your sales in March.

If that’s not you, go read some of the content that the other blokes on this blog write about (some of these dudes are pretty witty).

Know the formula of prospects to leads to contacts to buyers to repeat customers…

Know it and then improve it.  That’s your homework to do.

What I want to inspire you about is your focus on the person.

…..The other side of the sales contract.

……….The line item in your CRM with a price tag attached.

……………The entity “cutting the check” to you when you close the deal.

The person you are trying to seduce with your sweet sales love story.

Those persons generally:

1. Want to be appreciated
2. Enjoy funny, witty messaging
3. Hate to feel abused
4. Want to help others
5. Hurt
6. Think about what’s in it for them
7. Will invest in you if you ask them to
8. Want to believe in something bigger than themselves
9. Fear change
10. Worry about paying the bills
11. Want to feel like they make a difference
12. Need money to survive
13. Live pretty stressed out
14. Tend to tell you the truth if you ask the right questions
15. Lie to protect their own best interests
16. Believe in karma
17. Like being appreciated
18. Know when you really care
19. Decide if they like you pretty fast
20. Will give you second chances if you ask

And a bunch of other drama that you learned in Sunday School.

Fall in love with people — the people spending money with you preferably — and watch as you close deals faster than ever.

Forget about  your sales numbers in March.  Hit your quota by February and take the whole damn month of March off…

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Good presentations can be extremely effective when trying to “turn” a prospective customer. While there is usually too much emphasis that is put on this part of the sale (i.e. “the close”), it is not doubt an important part of the sales process in most cases.

When giving presentations, salespeople often spend too much time on the wrong things. For the most part, prospects really don’t care about how long you have been in business, what your product or company story is, and who makes up your executive leadership. Unless your prospect has given you a reason in an earlier phase of the sale to address these items, you are simply spinning your wheels and losing their attention when you need it most.

Instead, your efforts need to be focused on the “goodies” of the deal. Your presentation needs to address how a prospective customer will ultimately make more money by doing business with you. Whether this comes from increased productivity, cost savings, recovering lost revenue, or all three – it matters not. It only matters that they believe your presentation at this point. If you can pull this off by presenting the goodies, you will achieve victory with your presentation.

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If you desire to make more money and work less in you sales career, then it would be in your interest to invest time in learning how to properly qualify prospective customers. More than any other sales activity we perform, this separates the winners from the losers in sales.

The #1 reason most salespeople fail in my opinion is because they don’t have enough prospects to sell to. Because of this, many salespeople come to believe that every lead they receive is “gold”. When this viewpoint is taken, little or no qualifying of the prospect takes place by the salesperson.

This is ultimately a mistake, because the #2 reason that most salespeople fail is by not properly qualifying prospective customers. In other words, the salesperson fails because he or she wastes too much time on prospects that will never buy or even if they do become customers, they don’t have enough sales volume to warrant the salesperson’s time.

We can take sales training to improve our overall salesmanship. We can read sales books or blogs to increase our selling knowledge. But we cannot create more time. No man, alive or dead, has ever been able to completely eradicate the problem of having only so much time.

Never forget that your time is valuable. And never hand over the most precious asset you have in sales (your time) without ensuring you have the utmost opportunity (by qualifying your prospects) to get the financial reward you deserve. If you don’t have a qualification process based on your business and customers currently in place, you should immediately develop one and practice it on an ongoing basis as soon as possible.

Popularity: 11% [?]