Years ago, the company I was with decided on a sales strategy to help their salespeople to be more effective and of course grow sales. We moved to a target account sales model. The quick translation of a target account-model meant that my prospective client list went from 25 prospects to five. Doing more with less seems counter-intuitive. How was I going to make the same sales goal with only one-fifth of the prospects to call on?
My immediate reaction was to start looking for another job. A few others in the office felt the same way, and within a few months, they were gone. Sticking around turned out to be the single best decision in my sales career. Somewhere along the way, it clicked for me that getting deep and wide within my clients was the only way to consistent success. Deep and wide meant really understanding each company’s business and forming close relationships with the people who kept them running.
Education and Accountability are Critical
Why would a company spend millions of dollars on my company’s product? This question resonated with me after hearing the message during my company’s sales training on Target Account Selling. The information I gleaned from the sales training shaped how I sold and still influences me today. As I learned later in my selling career, companies often change their selling approach but don’t invest properly in educating their sales force.
One of the most important functions of any sales team is holding team members accountable for whatever selling approach the company uses. Sales management’s unwillingness to enforce every team member’s adherence to the company sales process is a common yet critical failure I’ve observed. This is especially obvious when it comes to holding prima donna salespeople accountable for the new sales procedures and policies. If you leave a crack open for one salesperson to slip through, the entire team is likely to find the same gap.
Don’t Compete on Features and Functions
In the world of technology, especially a couple of decades ago, it was easy to get caught in the trap of competing on features and functions. The technology was evolving so fast that it was hard to not get swept up into this meaningless madness. It was clear after pursuing this approach that winning a “features and functions” beauty contest actually resulted in a loss. Clients expected commodity prices. If you didn’t meet their price expectations, they simply went with their second-choice vendor. As with any commodities, clients expect a low price to reflect the commodity approach used to win their approval.
Really Understanding Your Client’s Needs
Educating yourself about your client’s business and what is really important to them takes significant time. Twenty minutes of Google searches about your client before a meeting is not preparation. I often think about a quote commonly attributed to President Woodrow Wilson when preparing for a first-impression prospect meeting.
It goes, “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; If an hour, I am ready now.” Although many believe these are the words of Wilson, the quote’s genesis can be traced all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. If I had to point to my single biggest sales execution issue, it would easily be not preparing enough for each sales meeting.
Limited Opportunities to Fail
A limited number of prospects means you have a limited number of opportunities to fail.
Every impression can be the difference between taking another step forward on an opportunity or losing the prospect. For example, a poorly worded email or one with spelling errors can delay or possibly doom a potential relationship.
Limiting options in your business life can be the tipping point to taking the next giant leap forward in your career. But as we’ll explore in future articles, I contend that focusing on what’s important to our careers, family lives and personal lives are much more challenging today than it was just 20 years ago.
Try Something Radical
The new year is only a couple of weeks old. If your plate is already overflowing with work, take some quiet time away from your phone and email. Evaluate your plan, look at your client list and to-do list. If you’re like me, your to-do list is multiple pages. Next, consider cutting your list in half. Yes, I know you’re thinking that it’s impossible, but it’s not. Now, let’s take a radical step and cut the list by half again.
What does that list look like now? More importantly, do you feel more relaxed looking at this narrow and specific list? Limiting options in our business and personal lives is a way to more success and less stress. In future posts, we’ll stay with the theme of limited options and explore how they can offer positive results for us.
