Selling More: 4 Steps to Break out of the Sales Doldrums

Key
Points

The key to winning more orders is to “sell more” which means to consistently take actions that will lead to orders.Doing “enough” is never “enough.” More leads to more.Even with an influx of customer initiated leads, it may not be enough to make quota. A salesperson has to do what they need to do to make their number. (Tied to doing More vs enough)Not enough to just do more. Have to create value for the customer.Random sales activity ais not the same as doing “more.” Have to ensure that the steps you take create value for the customer.Sales activity always has to be tied to creating value for customer. Otherwise you are wasting your time and the customers.







Selling More: 4 Steps to Break out of the Sales Doldrums

 As a speaker, consultant and author, I am
often asked by sales managers and sales professionals: “If you had to
choose one piece of advice to give me about how to grow sales, what would it
be?” My standard answer is “Sell more.”

You
can see why I am considered such a sales genius and sales guru.

Of
course, persistent questioners, beguiled by the zen-like simplicity of my
advice, demand to know more. Surely there must be some inscrutable truth hidden
behind the words and I shake my head and whisper softly, so softly that they
must lean their heads in to hear my words, “Not really.” I motion for
them to sit at my feet and I reveal this mystery of sales.

I
illustrate the meaning of “Sell More” with a parable about a
salesperson for a typical medium-sized business. His name was Carlos. Carlos,
who went by the nickname Eckstein, always had a reason for everything. These
included why he would almost always make his numbers but never quite get there.
His boss was at a loss. He thought the problem might be spiritual so he
summoned me, the sales guru, to analyze the problem.

Observing
Eckstein in action was to see a fairly typical salesperson at work. On the
surface it looked like he was taking the right steps to succeed and he seemed
happy in his work. Unfortunately, his desire, his intensity and his sales
thought process matched his performance. It was mostly right. But something was
holding him back from taking his productivity to the next level besides the
mismatched socks he wore each day to work.

Eckstein’s
problem was one of distinguishing between “enough” and
“more.” He was like most salespeople in that regard. He always
thought he was doing “enough” to make his numbers and that if
everyone else just did their jobs then he would be able to make his quota. It
never occurred to him that the key to unlocking his success was doing
“more.”

If
you don’t have enough prospects, then sell…more. Prospect with existing
customers to assess if they have new requirements for your products and
services. Call existing customers for referrals and make those connections now.
Go to a networking event and meet 6 new contacts. Ask your connections on LinkedIn
for two introductions to potential new prospects. And, if you are lacking all
imagination, then heaven forbid, go make some cold calls. Fill every hour with
selling. Just sell. More often. More persistently. More creatively. More
aggressively. Sell. More.

If
you have enough prospects, but aren’t hitting your numbers, then you also need
to sell more. Be responsive in Zero-Time to customer requirements for
information, instantly follow up every lead with the answers the customer
needs, turn around all requests for quotes and proposals and information
immediately. and then fill every spare minute with productive sales activity to
sell with maximum impact in the least time possible. Just sell…more. More
responsively, more quickly, more forcefully, more actively, more
enthusiastically. Sell More.

Sell
More does not mean to engage in random sales activity. That is what gets sales
people like Eckstein into the hole they are in now. To ‘Sell More’ means to
fill your sales time with intelligent, productive, creative, responsive sales
actions that create value for your prospect, customer and company.

Sell
More. Win More Orders. Simple.

Doing
What You Need to DO

There
is a lot of talking and blogging going on about cold calling and whether it is
a necessary or even desired part of the sales mix. I can’t resist putting in my
two cents on this discussion.

I
have recently seen a couple of studies and listened to some presentations about
the changes taking place in how sellers and buyers are interacting that are
worth considering as we leap into the fray. In general, the trends discussed
are reflected in the 2010 DemandGen and Genius.com study titled “Inside
the Mind of the B2B Buyer.” One of their key findings was that more than
90% of B2B customers/buyers said that on their transactions that they had
initiated contact with the seller. Only 10% said that they were contacted cold
by the seller.

Personally
I’m not convinced that the 90%, is an accurate reflection of the sales
situation today. But that is really beside the point. The key takeaway is that
it is an indicator of how your customer’s perception of the role of sellers has
changed and how the actual role of sales is continuing to evolve at a rapid
pace. The Internet and social media have irrevocably transformed how
conversations with some significant fraction of your prospects are initiated.
And, even if you, as a seller, initiate contact with a prospect, chances are
high they are going to possess some level of pre-education and
pre-qualification on your product and service on that first call (or they are
going to acquire it by browsing your website while on the phone with you.)

What
does this mean for cold calling? In an ideal world, cold calling wouldn’t be
necessary. In our fantasy, marketing departments would prove capable of
generating well-targeted (or “sales worthy” to borrow a term from my
friend Nancy Nardin) in-bound sales leads in such large quantities, week after
week, month after month, that all available sales time would be consumed with
responsive follow-up. Wouldn’t it be great if the world were handed to you on a
silver platter like that?

Unfortunately,
that dreamy ideal world doesn’t exist for most companies. Using the figure from
above as an example, even if you meet 80% of your sales goal today from
prospects that originated as sales worthy in-bound sales leads, where will you
find the remaining 20%? You will find them from proactive prospecting (i.e.,
cold calling.)

If
you’re in Sales your job boils down to this: doing the hard work required to
meet your goals. Whenever there is a gap between in your pipeline between the
number of qualified prospect your need to meet reliably meet your goal and the
number of qualified prospects in your pipeline generated from in-bound sales
lead conversions, and there will almost always be one, it has to be filled in
by prospect activity generated by you. This means fulfilling your
responsibility as a salesperson to do what you have to do in order to meet and
exceed your assigned goal. If this means spending a portion of every day
following a disciplined prospecting process (i.e., doing some research to pick
targets, making connections online, getting on the phone or going out and
making calls) then that is what has to be done.

In
my first professional sales job out of college, in the pre-Internet dark ages,
I was selling big computers. Everyday involved getting kicked out of the office
at 8am and venturing out to make cold calls out in my territory. I have to
admit it didn’t come naturally to me. So I developed another approach. I hit
upon a system of hosting a seminar in our branch office every Wednesday
afternoon at 4pm during which I would demonstrate our system. I used business
directories to research names of potential prospects in my territory and mailed
out 10 postcards with a hand-written invitation every Thursday. I’d follow up
with everyone on the following Monday morning and again on the morning of the
seminar. Usually I’d end up with one or two attendees each week. Within months
I had a strong, constantly renewing pipeline and was killing my numbers. After
a couple years, I was getting two thirds of my business from existing accounts
and referrals. But every Thursday, I was still sending out 10 postcards and
every Wednesday I was playing host to new prospects.

No
matter how many leads you receive, cold calling, or proactive prospecting,
remains a necessity for most salespeople and most sales teams. Clearly the
amount of time a salesperson has to devote to cold calling could shrink as
increasing numbers of prospects pre-educate themselves online and initiate
connections with potential vendors. But the role sales prospecting plays in
building a strong pipeline of qualified prospects to ensure that you make your
numbers is will never go away completely.

Sometimes
you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Don’t
Confuse Sales Activity with Selling

Create
Value with Each Customer Interaction

I
read a blog posting recently about what a salesperson could do to increase
sales. The title was something catchy like “A Billion and One Tips to
Increase Sales.” It was hard to argue with the premise of the post.
Everyone in sales can use good advice on increasing sales. It’s the reason I
continue to read everything I can about sales. There is always something new to
learn.

In
this case, this author’s useful quick tips were all about creating more sales
activity. He was asking the question ‘What should you do if you have prospects
but they aren’t moving forward fast enough?’ and providing answers that were
designed to create a flurry of sales activity around prospects to stimulate
them to engage and move forward with the seller.

But
is selling the same as sales activity? And, if a prospect is not yet fully
committed to the buying process, is random sales activity the way to get them
engaged?

Nothing
is sometimes better than something

I
had a salesperson, named Arte, working for me once who had confused activity
with selling. He came into my office one day and told me that he had invented
his own method of selling that he called SWARM. The acronym stood for Surround
With Activity to Regain Momentum. His thought was to envelop his prospects in a
constant swarm of sales activities such as of phone calls, visits, emails,
voice messages, invitations to webinars and seminars, product demonstrations in
the hope that eventually something would stick and the prospect would relent
and engage.

How’d
that work for Arte? Not so well. But he got high marks for creativity.

Unfortunately,
similar to Arte, many salespeople fall into the trap of believing that doing
something, anything, with a prospect is better than doing nothing. This happens
all the time when the prospect has gone radio silent. There are lots of reasons
why this occurs and it is the job of the salesperson to determine the answer
and respond appropriately and with content that has value for the prospect. But
rarely is the correct response to bombard the prospect with trivial,
time-wasting requests and interactions.

Keep
in mind the customer’s objective

In a
sales situation, or buying situation, it is important to keep in mind that the
goal of the customer is to gather the information or data they need to make an
informed purchase decision with the least investment of their time possible.
This is not to say that customers won’t spend the appropriate time to purchase
a product or service. This just means that they don’t want to invest a minute
more than they have to.

Create
and deliver value each time you talk to your prospects and customers

If
you are selling you should only be taking actions with a customer that have a
defined purpose, deliver clear value and support the customer’s goal. To that
end, instead of unthinkingly reaching out to the customer and demanding some of
his or her time with a trivial request, consider the opposite approach: make
sure that every interaction you have with a prospect or customer achieves
Maximum Impact in the Least Time (MILT) possible. It requires planning and
thought to make certain that each time you interact with the prospect or
customer you are providing information that will bring them closer to their
goal of making an informed decision. But the result is that you will bring
value to the customer through your selling. If you want a customer to engage,
create value for them by your actions. Wasting their limited time with
“sales activities” does the opposite.

Selling
has a purpose. It is not the goal of your prospects or customers to spend time
with you. In fact, the opposite is true. They want to accomplish their job,
which is to buy a product or service, while spending as little time with the
salesperson as possible. The winning salesperson will usually be the one who
knows how to make that happen.

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