Sales Resolutions 2011 – Part One

The
New Year is always an interesting time for salespeople and sales teams.  Plenty of people make New Years’ Resolutions
at this time of year, and some even make them for their sales, their career or
for their business.

I
thought it would be useful therefore, to give you an idea what I’m working on
with the sales leaders and salespeople of my clients, to help them make great
sales in 2011 – so that you can implement the same things to get great results
for yourself (or your team) as well!

Here
are my suggestions for the top New Years’ Resolutions for your sales team.

Sales Resolution No 1 – Increase Your Prospecting Activity

If
your goal or outcome for 2011 is to increase your sales, or that of your team,
one of the things to look at is to increase your prospecting activities.

Most
salespeople tend not to have enough prospects, and therefore rely on most of
their deals coming off, in order to hit their targets.  That’s a recipe for failure.

Take
a look at whatever prospecting activities you’ve been doing (that have been
working for you, of course) and look at how you can increase them.  You might also want to increase the ‘range’
of activities as well.

Whether
your prospecting activities include networking, cold calling, referrals, cold
canvassing or anything else, simply upping the activity will generate better
results.  Once you’ve done this, it’s now
time for the second step.

Sales Resolution No 2 – Filter Your Prospects Better

You
can only do this step, when you have a lot of prospects (hence my
recommendation in ‘Resolution 1’, above), so if you haven’t got enough
prospects yet, go back to the first step until you have!

One
you have enough prospects, the next step is to filter them.  What I mean by that is to look at which
prospects are better for you.  So how on
earth do you judge which are better than others?

If
you’ve already profiled your prospects, then you’ll already know what I
mean.  If you haven’t, here are some
quick tips.  From experience either you
or your manager will have an idea which of your prospects are most likely to
convert, which will do so faster than others, and which will be worth the most
money.

This
might be based on their industry, the level of decision maker you’re talking to
(or not!), their buying motivation (you have found that out, haven’t you?) size
of project, approval process and impending deadlines etc. 

Based
on the results of your filtering, you can now work out which prospects you need
to focus on, and which ones require you to qualify them a little harder.  Please note, if the thought of doing this
makes you hesitant or concerned that you might lose a prospect or two, then you
probably haven’t got enough prospects in the first place – go back to step 1!


Andy Preston

Andy Preston is the UK’s leading authority in sales training and business sales techniques. Not only has Andy worked with some top brands in the UK helping them to negotiate better deals and even close on a higher price, his impressive client portfolio encompasses brands such as HSBC, Nissan, Siemens, McAfee and FedEx – to name just a few!

http://www.andypreston.com

Andy Preston is the UK’s leading authority in sales training and business sales techniques. Not only has Andy worked with some top brands in the UK helping them to negotiate better deals and even close on a higher price, his impressive client portfolio encompasses brands such as HSBC, Nissan, Siemens, McAfee and FedEx – to name just a few!