3 Tips to grow your Sales!

Hello, Spring! Sunday marked the first day of Spring. We are nearly three months into our year, or months from ending your year for some whose year ends in June.

I have a question for you.
How are you feeling about your year so far?
Are you on track to exceeding your goals?

I was in a coaching session with one of my sales leaders, and we discussed that Three months ago, we were doing annual reviews, planning, and proclaiming what we needed to do in 2022 to exceed our goals. If you are in sales, one plan may have been to make more money? You detailed how you would do that. Call one new prospect a day? Add another service line or product to your existing customer. Perhaps, asking for a referral from one of your most successful clients.

A plan to move your business forward.

Today is a great time to review your business plan to see if you’re on track or need to Spring into Action to ensure you reach your goals. So we need to ask ourselves what we need to do to create momentum and move our prospects or clients forward.

Spring into Action
Action is required to move our business forward. Productivity guru David Allen understands how to get things done. His bestselling book, Getting Things Done, is about time management. And many of the lessons he teaches in his book apply directly to sales. One of his most relevant lessons for salespeople involves breaking down a more significant task ( earning the business) into the logical sequence of events required to help the customer make a purchase decision (your sales process.) Allen writes about needing to know the “very next physical action required to move the situation forward at each step of your process.”

Let’s look at that statement in the context of sales. In selling terms, you have to know the action you should take at each step of your sales process to move the customer at least one step closer to making their purchase decision. Each client has a journey to doing business, and it’s our job to figure it out.

Information is Power

So we have to ask ourselves: What information or insights are the prospect or client expecting from me during our next meeting that will move their buying decision forward? What value can I provide or share that will have them take action on doing business with me?

Be Deliberate
We face challenges because we don’t know or have developed the following action required to move our clients forward. Too many of us operate on auto-pilot. We show up for work every day and not intentionally but try to apply the same sales process to every prospect. And when that doesn’t work, we assume they went with another competitor or didn’t want to do business with us and move on to the next prospect. We have to remember each new target customer and client is motivated by different things. Our goal is to discover what moves them.

For example, if one of your next action steps is to send a follow-up email to the customer. Before you take that step, you have to ask yourself why are you sending that email? What value are you delivering in the email that will make a difference to the buyer? What information will you provide to move the customer’s buying process forward?

And, most importantly, what’s the “very next action” that you want the customer to take as a result of receiving the value you delivered? This process would apply to email, phone calls, zoom calls, or face-to-face meetings.

Success in sales requires us to be curious, thoughtful, mindful, and deliberate. Instead of dreaming about getting that order, you should carefully set a series of short-term goals for your prospects that lay out the following actions you need to take to help them take action.

Let’s recap our strategy. Don’t make a move with a prospect or customer until you understand the action you want from that client. Following up will rarely make a difference in the customer’s decision-making process if it isn’t intentional. Be more deliberate and have an action plan for each interaction to deliver more value to help your prospect make a fast and favorable decision to choose you!

Again, the question you need to walk through is, What information or insights are the prospect or client expecting from me during our next meeting that will move their buying decision forward.

Close more business by Springing into Action!

Learn more about Simplifying Your sales meetings using 3-word topics at http://www.threewordmeetings.com.