Excelling and standing out in anything requires a game plan and relentless execution.
In sales, I learned that these simple actions taken EVERY DAY boosted my sales performance and yielded amazing results.
#1: Check your performance dashboard to see where you are year-to-date. Keep your targets in front of you and look at them constantly. Where are you falling short of your objectives and what action do you need to take to get on track?
#2: Don’t try to boil the ocean. Focus on the critical few things that will help you achieve 80% of your goals. Chasing “the possible many” will definitely keep you busy, but is counterproductive.
#4: Focus on high value clients. Pareto is alive and well in sales. A disproportionate number of clients yield most of your revenue and represent the best potential for more. Take care of THEM and grow THEM.
#5: Build time in your schedule for deepening client relationships. You need a balance of short term “get revenue now” and longer term “sow seeds for the future” energy. All eggs in the here and now basket will deprive you of future earnings.
#6: Learn something new. Repetition is NOT an ingredient for success. What got you here won’t get you where you need to go. It’s the new stuff that will invigorate you and provide the potential for keeping pace with changing markets.
#7: Make a non-sales call to see “how things are going”. Taking the pulse of your customers regularly is critical to success and survival. Some call it unproductive time; I call it a smart and essential investment.
#8: Schedule for the unexpected. Don’t plan 100% of your day, for it assumes it will be “orderly”. Since when is the day of a salesperson predictable? I’ve never had the pleasure. Build some “unassigned” time into your day for the over-the-transom and unexpected stuff that always happens.
#9: Surprise your boss. Give them what they DON’T expect. You want your actions to illicit “WOW!” from them. They will notice; you will benefit.
#10: Call marketing and give them some client feedback whether they want to hear it or not. Product and solution designers own your success; ensure the client drives what they deliver to the marketplace.
#11: Discover a “customer secret“; something that no one else knows about them. While others are competing on what the customer NEEDS, you will get the prize by satisfying their innermost desire; what they covet and crave AND are willing to pay premium prices for.
#12: Recognize someone on the service team who has saved your ass. If service goes south so will sales eventually. Service people are sales heroes so when they bail you out make a BIG deal of it. Don’t be cheap; spend some of your bonus on them so they will do it again for you the next time there is a service OOPS! (and there will be a next time).
Simple proven and practical stuff.
