Feb.2006 How's it going so far?

I am always shocked at the beginning of February to realise that more than 10% of the year has already passed. Remember all those plans that were hatched between Christmas and New Year? (Those of you who diligently asked for and then completed a Sales Forecaster - how's it going?)

Here's the news you didn't want to hear! If your January results weren't at least 8.5% of your annual target, then you have already slipped!

And experience shows that while a 3 - 4% slippage can be recovered; by the time we get to the end of March, unless you are in a seasonal business or something pretty extraordinary happens, you are going to end up not achieving the full potential of 2006.

All in all, quite a lot to make one feel sorry for oneself and definitely a motivator to go out and sell!

But hang on!

Why are you selling? Some of the reasons my clients cite are: to make money - of course, to pay the bills - sure, to get rich - duh!, because you enjoy it - hopefully. In short there may be any number of reasons, but the one that is mentioned least is "to fill a customer need".

I have had two experiences in the past few weeks where this has been graphically illustrated.

I was working with a client on some live customer development at a trade exhibition. The first few times he made an approach, he started with a fairly standard opening during which he introduced himself and his company and highlighted the services he could offer. (Not surprisingly) he received a number of cold shoulders. Having witnessed the approach a couple of times it was obvious that far from the desired response, he was turning off his potential contacts and blowing his opportunities. During the course of the morning we turned his pitch around, so that he started by first listening to the customers and only then presenting services and solutions which he had tailored to their needs by listening to what they wanted. By the end of the morning we had improved the hit rate and built a very nice pipeline.

At another event I was presenting an Accelerated Sales Training Module to a group of entrepreneurs. As always I framed my talk around my sales process THE QUEST SOLD which is a simple framework for managing the sales cycle. Some of you will know that the “E” in THE stands for Empathy and reminds you that to be successful in selling, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. We had a short discussion about this and then one of the audience said “You know it is remarkable, I have never once tried to imagine what my customers think when I pitch. I have suddenly realised why they don’t form orderly queues for my product – it is because I am not helping them to solve a problem”.

As a first step to boosting sales, try putting yourself in your prospect’s situation. Sure you have your own problems, but if you really want to get your sales going, review your pitch in the light of what THEY need to hear; and if you can’t do that yourself, why not have Proposal Masters review your sales proposition or better still, arrange one of our Sales Training Courses to see how it should be done.