Focus Precedes Success (Part 2)

There are a handful of common things on which top salespeople put their focus regularly. I have picked out three of these areas for this article so that my readers can get started (or continue) putting their constant attention where they need to:

This is Part II in a three part series about FOCUS for Salespeople

II—Begin with the End in Mind
Stephen Covey introduced us to this habit in his book entitled “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” It is my belief that when a salesperson focuses on what the end result looks and feels like in any sales cycle, he/she will navigate the seas with a stronger purpose.

Note: Beginning with the end in mind is about the results that the customer gets with the use of your product or service and NOT about simply making a sale!!

This area of focus backs up what I wrote about Pre Call Preparation in my last post but it also requires that you start with a vision and a goal. So, if we are to take a look at three areas of dialogue on which top sellers focus their sales process, they would be:

1-A Look Back over Your Shoulder-(What got us to this point?)
2-A Current Overview (What is the “State of affairs?”)
3-What do you Want to be When you Grow Up? (What is the vision of the ideal future?)

This format allows us to “frame up” the things that got the prospective buyer to where they are and to define the things that are necessary to get them where they want to go. Again, it starts with understanding the past and current situation and then defining the path (with the customer) to the previously defined (and mutually desired) result.

As a salesperson, I often looked at the entire sales cycle as a series of gates that needed to be entered and closed before we could move to the next. Once a gate was closed, then we could proceed to the next step. I believed, as I still do (and teach), that every step of the sales cycle must have two clear things:

1-A clear PURPOSE for the call (as mentioned in my previous post) and
2-A clear

—you can’t always CLOSE the sale, but you have to always close the next step.

The difference that I have found between top producers and most other salespeople is that they define the END of their sales cycle differently. Most salespeople think that the final stage is when the contract is CLOSED. Top Salespeople feel that the sales cycle is not complete until they have received their TENTH referral from the client. This is based upon results! This one difference changes the strategy on most of the sales calls and changes the preparation and value-add initiatives on every interaction of the sales cycle!

Next blog post on FOCUS addresses the need for Constant Forward Motion—don’t miss it!

How to save time on every sales call

We’ve been looking at time management, and a big part of your day is the sales call, so let’s take a closer look at how to prepare for a more time-efficient sales call.

I’ve asked the question before: “What’s the purpose of this call?”

If you don’t have that question answered, in writing, the chances are, your call is not going to get the desired results — because you don’t know what they are. If you’re clear on your purpose, you’re going to be more focused on your sales call.

More focused on your sales call is better for you and your customer, because he wants this time-management stuff too. Because sales people take up his time. Asking yourself about the purpose of this call helps you design better questions.

To design better questions, you write them down.

You write them down, you practice them.

You practice them, then you are better at them.

You ask them better, they get answers.

They get the right answers, and they get the right answers the first time.

The right answers the first time give you more knowledge.

Want to change your life? Rock your to-do list!

Can you really change your life with your to-do list?

Yes, you can. And here’s how: Prepare the night before. Think on paper. Put your to do list together and write everything down. And be ready to limit the amount of things that are on that list.

If you just put down everything you think of, you end up with an enormous list – and you know what happens then. You start your day and you find the smallest thing on this list and just get that knocked out. telling yourself: “Let me just clear up the little stuff first.”

And you keep going like that. Here’s the danger in that: That little stuff will suck you into a time vortex that takes you away from your priorities.

If you are going to write things down on a list, make sure they are your priorities, or your manager’s priorities, or your customer’s priorities.

Work on the biggest ones first, until they’re done. Leave the little stuff until the end of the day. The most important thing to think about when you are working on this is: What’s the purpose of this activity?
Is it taking me closer to my goals, or further away?

How to use your to-do list to be more successful

The to-do list is more than just a good idea. It’s a necessity.

So how do you make a list that will accommodate all the stuff that gets thrown at you, and still enable you to stay on track?

At the end of the day, you plan for the next day. You prioritize and get your A items listed out. Those are the must-do items.

Your B items are your should-do items.

Your C items are your nice-to-do items. Now this is where most sales people fall into a trap, and  focus too much time on their nice-to-do’s .

The nice-to-do’s might be lunch with a colleague, running an errand. Let’s face it. When you’re doing this stuff, you’re not working on the clock. You’re not necessarily punching a clock You don’t have a manager looking over your shoulder, asking “Where are you? What are you doing?”

And you’re in the field. So you can run those errands. You can stop home. Pick up the dry cleaning. Things like that. Nice-to-do’s. But the nice-to-do’s can eat up your day. Be careful with the nice-to-do’s. I’m not saying always avoid them. Nice-to-do’s can also be disguised as “Well this is important,” like visiting an existing customer.

If you don’t have a purpose for your call, visiting the existing customer is just visiting. And visiting is nice to do. Visiting with a plan takes it up a notch, and it’s more efficient use of your time. So your C items, be careful with what you’re doing.

You move to your D items, the ones that should be delegated to somebody else.

Want to get more done? Add two hours to your day

It turns out you can’t really manage time, after all.

But it is possible to accomplish more things during a certain amount of time, if you have a plan.

Let’s take it down to the micro-view: When you have a to-do list, every day, then chances are you’ve got a road map on which to run.

Now, we all know that more stuff comes up during the day. A customer calls with their hair on fire, and you’ve got to take care of something. Something got left out the truck, and you’ve got to run a two-hour round trip out to their place of business.

How do we prepare to accomplish the things that we want to accomplish each day, even as all these other things are coming up?

Say I need to accomplish two ½ days worth of work on Tuesday. It’s going to be sales-related, administrative-related, strategic as well as tactical. On top of that, I’ve got a two-year old at home who I want to spend some time with. And I’d still like to get that workout in the morning. And walk my daughter to school.

There are things that are going to have to get accomplished, so I need to prepare by making a list.

The best and most efficient time managers are those people who plan every day the night before. Every day, you need to have a list of everything that you got to accomplish the next day. And it needs to be ranked in order of importance: A, B, C, D and E.

The A items are the must-do’s. They are of heavy importance and there will be major consequences if you don’t get them accomplished. Those are the things with serious deadlines. They have heavy priorities attached, your priorities or your manager’s priorities.

But there are several of them, too often, during the day that we have to accomplish. Now those are the first things that we work on, the most important things. Now, typically if they’re big, nasty, hairy projects that are going to take a couple of hours of our time we have a tendency to kind of put those off and say, “OK, I’m going to schedule some time in the day, my quiet time…”

No. First thing every day you need to attack those. Now, you’ve got the Golden 120 in the morning, from 5 a.m. until 7 a.m.

You want to get more done? Get up early. From seven, eight o’clock in the morning until five, six o’clock at night you’re at the mercy of everybody else’s priorities. Everybody else’s screaming and jumping up and down complaining. You’re at the mercy of your manager. You’re at the mercy of your family. You’re at the mercy of your customers and so forth.

You want to be a winner? If you want to get more done with your time, give yourself more time. Get up early. Get in the five o’clock club and stop complaining that you never have any time for yourself because from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. is your time — 120 minutes of uninterrupted  time to advance your most critical priorities and goals. Just do it.

Next week we’ll look closer at how to create a prioritized list that will keep you on track.

Photo by dicktay2000, via Creative Commons 2.o.

Seven steps to achieving your goals

Here are the seven steps to setting and achieving your goals.

First, you need to be very clear. You need to clearly define each one of your priorities for this coming quarter.

You can’t say something like, “I want to make more sales, I want to make more money, I want…”

That is not specific. Don’t make your goal a wandering generality, like: “I want to buy a new car.”

If you want to buy a new car, be totally clear about:

• Make
• Model
• Year
• Color of the exterior
• Color of the interior
• Wheels
• Tires
• Sound system

Visualize that car and own it in your mind. Write it down. Find out how much it costs, what the down payment’s going to be, what the monthly payments going to be, how much the insurance is going to be, what’s the name of the insurance company, where you’re going to buy it.

Now you mentally own the thing.

If your goal is “more sales” then get specific. “I will open four new accounts in the next 90 days, averaging no less than $3,000 per week in purchases from me at a margin of an average of no less than 18%.”

That’s much clearer than, “I want to do more sales. I want to open some more accounts this month.”
Move them from wishes to priorities, real goals that are specific.

Want to get more done in less time? Practice

To effectively manage time, you have to be efficient at what really matters. So where do you need practice?

Brian Tracy’s book, “Eat That Frog” is about time management, and it has a section called “Define Your Key Result Areas.”

Now, for sales professionals, there are a lot of key result areas. Let’s take, for example, prospecting. It isn’t just dialing the phone.

• You’ve got to know what to say if there’s a voicemail.
• You’ve got to know how to address a gatekeeper.
• You’ve got to know how to deal with automated attendants, how to work your way through that process.

We find that 8.3 out of every 10 calls a sales professional makes ends up in a voicemail system. We need to practice how to get through some of those myriad ways that voicemail is designed to keep us out. You need to practice what your script says, or your voicemail message says, in order to get more calls returned.

I need to practice how to get that gatekeeper on my side. And when I get that live person or that decision maker on the phone, I have to be very clear in what the purpose of my call, and I have to practice what I’m going to say. I have to practice what I’m going to ask. I have to practice how I’m going to respond when they have questions or objections.

You can’t manage time

There’s no such thing as management of time. There’s only management of what we do within the amount of time we have.

Of course, many people use tips and tricks to get things done in the allotted amount of time. But a lot of times we feel like we are victims to other people’s time, priorities and projects.

Consequently, a lot of us are running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  And we’re trying to figure out how to get all of the things done that we need to get done in the time allotted.

Too often, the things that get put at risk or the things that get moved off the calendar are the things that are most important to you; your priorities; your time with your family; your time with your most important customers.

And that’s not a good feeling. It’s like you’re just shut down. You reload, refuel and go out there and do it again, and find that you’re still not make progress toward your most important goals.

So let’s do something about that. Let’s look at the three P’s that are essential for time management:

• Planning
• Preparing
• Practice

You might say, “OK, I can see how planning fits into this. I can even see how preparing fits into this. But how does practice fit in?”