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What did you learn last week that's improved your B2B sales results this week?
Curious to hear how learning from sales practices are informing best sales practices.
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4 Answers
John: Initially, I wasn't sure what to do with this question. Then I begun focusing only on sales again and realized how important this question is to ask yourself every week.
Here is what I learned:
1. Selling is hard and that is why you hire good people to do it. (had to throw that in)
2. You can't be inconsistent. Persistent effort will pay-off in the long run. Prospecting is a perfect manifestation of this, if you don't prospect all the time -- you will get nowhere. That does not mean you have to bang your head against the wall, doing the same thing over and over. You should optimize "what" you say or send, but you need to prospect every day to be successful.
3. Writing is a major part of the sales job and you have to be good at this. Efficiencies will be gained by thinking like marketers and trying to understand which emails work or don't then emulate them going forward.
4. Decide what the goal for every communication is -- email, phone call, etc aka what do you want the buyer to do next?. Only choose one. This is another trick I have taken from marketing. Example: If you send an email, decide what you want to have happen, and then focus on that conversion: example: you may send an email in order to set up a meeting. Make sure you frame the email to achieve that goal.
I learned that persistence is king, just when you are ready to move on, you need to stop, review if you have done everything you planed to do with an account or prospect. Often we let emotion drive decisions, we get frustrated by events, actions, daily distractions or other thins, and we lose focus. When that happens and we are in a hard sale, we take short cuts, and when those don’t produce results we rationalize why it’s time to move on. This is when it makes sense to step back and make sure you have done everything in your plan, and that you did it well. If you didn’t do it well, “just called it in”, then go back and do it again, the prospect will not be offended, in fact they will appreciate your effort, and feel comfortable that you are willing to take the time and effort to do things right. (Of course it is a good idea to do it right the first time).
So that’s what I learned in salvaging an opportunity last week, stepped back, reviewed and recalibrated, and executed again, and won.
I 're-learned' that you have to be prepared to win. I was at Dreamforce in our executive meeting room having 8-10 back to back meetings per day. Some of our sales team did a magnificent job on the briefing notes and I studied them and the meetings went great. Some did a great job, but I did a bad job of studying the notes and the meetings did not work out so well. And some did not do a great job of the briefing notes and those meetings were not that great either.
Prepare for your moment of truth. Learned that with a 2X4 to the temple last week. Thanks for making me relive this John!
All great responses. Adding to these:
Know your priorities and focus, don't get diverted from them. If you need to change, do this consciously, don't fall into it. Execute, Execute, Execute--everything else is just talk.
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