1. 39-Still Plenty of Time
There's around 39 selling days left in the rest of the year. Plenty of time to continue to sell the value, provide more testimonials, fine tune those proposals and drive to the close. With average sales cycles of 120 days in a complex B2B sale, those processes that you began back in September will be bearing fruit over the next 30 plus days.
The key to success right now is to carefully balance the use of your time: 80% for closing deals and 20% for both planning 2011 and developing Q1 leads. Carve out a day right now at the end of the week between Christmas and New Year's to sit down and really plan out in detail what strategies and tactics you're going to implement in the first half of 2011. Planning sales success is not that difficult. Simply, No plan; No win.
2. The Math of Successful Sales Productivity
If you've been reading The Competitive Edge for some time, you've already been introduced to The Derby Law of 3,000:
A successful salesperson working 60 hours a week (average for a "good" B2B salesperson) equals around 3,000 hours. The reality is that 1/3 of that just disappears due to vacations, holidays, sick time and a typical 15% loss utilization time factor. With around 2,300 hours left, our survey data says that only about 57% of that is actually spent directly prepping for sales activities and then actually involved in the guts of the sales processes. The bottom line is that what results is around 1,200 hours actually becomes available for direct selling activities, and the question then becomes: "Just how effectively is that time being used?"
Some interesting recent data to think about when you're planning through how to increase your sales or sales management productivity for that relatively small amount of available time:
-The ability to contact a lead decreases within 5 minutes. In 30 minutes, the likelihood of connection plummets 100x.
-50% of marketing assets need to be updated or retired
-80% of marketing assets are NOT being used by sales
-The average salesperson forgets more than 80% of what they learn in sales training within 30 days.
Solve these and similar issues, (just as examples here), and you're taking your first steps to begin improving your sales productivity. Our experience shows over the last five years that a comprehensive master plan focused on sales productivity improvement for 2011 should result in 30% plus improvements in one year .
Next step: Think about bringing your sales team together in the first two weeks of January to develop this plan in detail.
Click HERE for a few guidelines on creating successful Value Propositions as part of your sales weaponry.
At any time if you have questions or just want an objective sounding board about Sales, send me an email me at jack@derbymanagement.com or just call my cell at 617-504-4222. I'll make sure that I get back to you by the end of that day.
Good Selling! It's shaping up to a great quarter!
Jack
Head Coach
