When we talk about time management, one of the personalities I most admire is the Lord, and I say Lord in large print, “Brian Tracy”. Not only in time management, but also in the Art of Selling.
In my opinion, it is incredible how some of the things he wrote about sales, leadership, time management, among others, a few years ago are still so current.
One of the things I remember, and which he often mentioned, was that we should eat a frog every morning.
Don’t shiver already thinking about the frog and the swallowing.
Obviously, it’s figurative.
But the idea is that if we do a task that is somewhat boring and boring first thing in the morning, the rest of the day will go much better for us, given the energy generated by completing that task.
But what do sales have to do with frogs, you’re probably thinking?
If you think about it, there’s a set of frogs in sales that nobody likes to do.
You want an example?
Prospecting!
It’s not that it’s like this with everyone, but of the more than 3000 people I’ve trained in Sales in Portugal, a large percentage twist their noses at prospecting.
If you think about your company or your personal case, if you’re a salesman, you wake up every day saying:
“Oh, good, today I’m going to do prospecting”?
Of course you’re not.
But what is certain is that much of a commercial’s success is based on the quantity and quality of doors it can open to potential customers.
With prospecting, however it’s done.
In our opinion, with the advent of Sales 2.0, i.e. the integration of new internet channels that allow us to reach our customers, there is a set of new tools that cannot be ignored as valid to generate business.
If you don’t know what linkedin, xing, order of sellers, startracker, among others, I strongly advise you to find out.
You may be missing out on a great gateway to your potential customers.
No wonder we have a section dedicated to this in our “How to Sell More and Better” courses.
Now if it’s something that costs and takes work, by frog theory, you should do it first thing in the morning.
Much of a commercial’s success depends on its discipline and strategy.
When we have a strategy, we can check if it’s working and, if it’s not, change some of the components or the parts, to get better results.
A strategy for some businesses might be:
“Prospecting phone calls in the morning, meetings after lunch, and drafting proposals later in the day.”
Does it work for all businesses?
Of course not, but it is an idea of day-to-day organization of the salesperson.
The issue of time management in commercial activity is not peaceful.
Much has been written and little consensus has been reached.
No two salesmen are the same.
That’s why it’s important that the time management of each one takes that into account.
But different or not, it is common sense that if we can’t be in front of our customers, nothing that comes next in the commercial process can happen.
If we are just waiting for our customers to come to us, then, as the saying goes, we can wait sitting down.
In times of difficulty, special care must be taken not to neglect prospecting, so we must fight even harder and try to open even more doors.
If our closing ratios have decreased, then there is no other simple solution that I know of that does not go through prospecting and opening more doors to compensate for this.
Look at your sales metrics, if any.
If they do not exist, that is one more reason to come to the 12th National Congress of Performance and Business Motivation.
There will be an intervention dedicated to this topic.
But as I was saying, look at your metrics of converting phone calls into meetings, meetings into proposals and proposals into closures and open your eyes to the current reality that surrounds you.
If you are honest with yourselves, you will see that you will have to increase the first component of prospecting to compensate for the decrease in all the others.
This week you already know!
Get on the phone!
You’ll see it doesn’t hurt… almost nothing!
Also published on Medium.
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