Written by guest blogger, Stacey Kavanagh
Every sales person has a time when they are stuck in sales purgatory. Deals are moving at a crawl or worse, not flowing at all. You cannot understand because you are using all of your old techniques that have worked in the past and yielded fantastic results. Now those same tried and true efforts are barely creating a whisper of interest. You are working long hours, making calls, hitting the pavement, to come away with not very much at all. You are stuck. Sales Block, the killer of all Salespeople confidence and esteem.
Before we discuss how to get “unstuck”, let’s talk about how we got stuck in the first place. The key to overcoming an obstacle is learning how to prevent the onset of it in the first place. Many sales people formulate a business plan and stick with it, no matter what. Business plans should always be very flexible. Your plan should be a comprehensive document filled with not only what you plan to do, but include goals, alternative plans and specific guidelines to measure your successes and failures. You should look to your plan often and make adjustments. Many salespeople get stuck when they forget the key step of checking in on their plan and making the necessary adjustments. They continue to do the same old thing, when the same old thing is not working. There are several reasons that the old dog needs to learn a new trick, some being social media, change in demographics, and possibly change in company leadership.
So, now that we discussed how we got stuck, how to we become sticky proof:
1) Work your events – Networking is part of the job. We are out there day in and day out. Set a goal for you to speak to three new people. Set an additional goal to make an appointment with two of them.
2) Work your network – Have you been doing an amazing job for your clients? Ask them for a recommendation to another contact. Let them know how important it is for you to meet new people, so keep their eyes and ears open for any new opportunities for you.
3) Work your phone lines- Keep in constant contact with your network of clients, your referral sources and your prospects. Secondly, utilizing the phone line is a great way to build your prospect pipe line. Identify a list of potential clients and let them know who you are what you stand for.
4) Work the pen and paper – Personal notes go a long way in business development. Identify an article that pertains to them and let your prospect know you thought this would be of interest to them. Ask if they would like to get together and discuss. Small, but big gesture.
5) Work your calendar – Sales is volume game. Make sure that you are in front of a minimum of five people per week. Do not slack, five is the minimum, not the maximum.
6) Work to close your pipeline – Make sure that while you are building your pipeline, you are keeping your current prospects happy but continuing to offer exemplary service that they can count on.
And if all of this does not work, change it up. This is the beauty of sales planning. You’re limitless in the ideas and techniques. Just make sure that with all things you track your success and by all the means celebrate your wins.
Please comment below on what sales tactic makes you shine…
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