Are you set for growth for the rest of the year – or just losing more ground?
Well, here we are. Not only is 2011 gone, but we’re 1/12 of the way finished with 2012. Are your results this year looking markedly different than last year? More importantly, are your ACTIONS any different than last year? It might just be me, but I’ve had a significant run of talking to business owners, sales managers, and even salespeople who have become either complacent or defeated (they’ve essentially given up on improving their results) to the point where their entire companies are just going through the motions.
It doesn’t have to be that way! I know that sometimes this can be difficult to remember, but you must keep in mind that the most powerful determinant of your result s is not the economy, politics, the weather, or other outside forces. You are still in charge of your own destiny, and if your path isn’t what you want it to be, it’s YOU who can make a change. If you’re stuck in a rut, here are 7 ways that you can make the next 11 months something different than the last one. And whether you’re a salesperson, a sales manager, or a business owner, there’s something in here for you.
- Get off your butt and start prospecting. The Number One cause of sales atrophy is a lack of prospecting. In selling, the big bucks go to the salespeople who are continually building and growing their businesses. If that’s not you, it’s time to get started.
- Use every sales call to develop your customers. Get away from the rote “how are things going” calls with your existing customers, and instead start using EVERY CALL to build your business. Sell them more stuff, deepen relationships, and get some referrals.
- Get LinkedIn. Forget Facebook. LinkedIn is the Number One platform for professional B2B networking; that’s what it’s designed for and that’s what it does. The entire purpose of LinkedIn is to facilitate professional referrals and testimonials. Use it! If you’re not on LinkedIn, there’s a good chance you’re losing business to someone who is.
- Get some testimonials. When customers tell you what a great job you’re doing, what do you do? Do you just grin and say “thanks,” or do you ask them to put that information in the form of a testimonial? Testimonials can be video, written on letterhead, or even posted on LinkedIn. What matters is that your customers are willing to state, for the record, how good you are.
- Learn your customers. Product knowledge isn’t king anymore. Customer knowledge is. Focus your time and energies into better learning your customers, their needs, their wants, their objectives, and their definitions of success.
- Unpack your briefcase. Salespeople carry a lot of junk into sales calls. Some of it is paper, and some of it is in the form of old, hackneyed sales techniques that don’t work anymore. Heck, some of them never did, but salespeople have been great about sopping up techniques like the “Firing Horace,” the “Negative Reverse Questions,” the “Take Away,” the “Inward Outward with a Half Twist in the Layout Position” (ok, I made that one up), and other junk that gets in the way of honest human dialogue. Not sure what to get rid of? Here’s a hint – any sales technique with a name is probably a good candidate.
- For the Owners and Managers, If you can’t change your people, change your people. If your people aren’t doing the right things – if they’re complacent and unwilling to take the actions needed to build your business – then it’s perfectly OK to give them opportunities, training, and tools to change their behavior. I encourage it, for that matter; especially since I’m usually providing them some of the tools! With that said, if your people refuse to take hold of those opportunities, they’ve given you little choice. Your salespeople should be the driving force behind growth at their company. If they’re not, you might not have the right people.
The point behind all this is that this is not a time for complacency, for comfort, or for defeatism. Whatever profit you don’t make in 2012 won’t come back; that opportunity is gone forever. Hawaiians have a saying: NOW is the moment of power. Seize your moment. Good selling for the rest of 2012.
