Sales is like sports: it is based on time management and fundamentals.
Time management is vital to a salesperson’s success. You either manage your day or your day manages you – and you won’t be hitting goals that way.
There are so many things to do from admin tasks, CRM data entry, Prospecting, Meeting, Networking, etc. that if you don’t black your time well, you won’t get much done. Managing how you spend your time is the magic of sales.
Time is Money. And we all have the same number of hours, so get efficient and block time for responsibilities.
On the other side of the coin is fundamentals. Meet, Ask, Quote, Close. The most important part of that is the ASK. If there is one area in the sales process that you can improve on to become very successful, it is Discovery. WHY? How? What?
- Why are you upgrading bandwidth?
- What websites do you need to get to with less latency?
- How are you securing that Internet pipe?
The one who asks the best question wins!
You can certainly transact business to win the business, but if you learn about the business and where it is going, you will get more wallet share as well as referrals.
If you can bring together a multi-vendor solution or a single bill solution, you are ahead of the pack. This is the magic that Partners bring. Yet it still comes down to how well you do Discovery.
Deals sit for a long time when the sales rep doesn’t really understand what Pain they are solving or Why the customer is making a change or what Outcome they are looking for.
Without the WHAT/WHY, even follow-up is dry.
Hard to enroll someone in a solution when you don’t know the Why or the What. Yet many sales reps do a very poor job of discovery.
Be Prepared. Ask great questions. Be Interested. Listen for Pain. Probe. Make the time spent with the Prospect count!
These are the basics. We have to improve our sales fundamentals.