Last Sunday I began my own rhythm of "The Summa' of '23" with my first official beach day. Whenever I'm working out of the home office at the NH beach, days like today begin with a beach run of a couple of miles, but pure beach time is simply doing little to nothing except reading and walking the beach.
There's a planned rhythm to my own process of pulling out the special beach blanket, unpacking the new spray cans of Trader Joe's Sunscreen, and packing the canvas beach bag with my i-Pad, articles I've printed out during the week. and survival snacks and a beverage. And all of that prep came together to a point of perfection on the perfect beach weather day last Sunday!
All it took was a bit of planning, prep, a bit of process, and having the rhythm of having various right tools in the right place at the right time.
Today with only 12 selling days left in the Q, the most successful salespeople have perfected their own selling rhythm to these 12 weeks of the quarter, the 20 days of June and the planned flow of the next 12 days.
- There's a prep time over the weekend to fine tune the details for the upcoming week
- There's email and calling patterns to "the money hours" of every day
- There's scheduled online and F2F meetings with detailed prep already planned
Every successful salesperson is hyper attentive to their own time availability and matching that to the limited time of their customers. One key Covid takeaway is that we know at every level that we all have very limited available time. We also learned very successfully that well planned 30-minute zooms both in terms of personal efficiency and customer effectivity easily replaced the waste of two-hour drive times. None of us, especially in today's financially cautious world, have any "extra" time, and by simply taking 15 minutes on a daily rolling basis looking out a week ahead of time to plan out the upcoming week and the balance of the month pays huge dividends...especially now halfway through the last month of the Q.
Sales Process
If creating that daily/weekly/monthly rhythm creates a level of sales success by leveling out our 10-12-hour days, there is nothing more impactful in sales success than adopting the rhythm of one defined sales process which becomes "The Way" we sell.
"The Way" then becomes the religion of how we sell. Every successful salesperson has their own sales process. It's one of the reasons that they're successful, and they have honed that process over their years of selling.
What's much more impactful for the entire company is taking those individual best practices of sales success and adopting a formal rhythm into a unified sales process for the entire sales team from BDRs to AEs to management as "The Way":
- Same process with the same 6-7 steps from Qualify to Close
- Same email, content, and presentation tools for specific steps
- Same required fluency in CRM use, analytics and immediate access to tools
- Same required skills training consistent among everyone on the team
- Same pride and culture of being on a winning team that has a rhythm and a plan
Sounds too formal and too much work? Check out our sales process tools since the math says otherwise with results of 20%-25% sales productivity improvements in just 9-12 months.
HAVE A GREAT DAY SELLING TODAY!!!
Just some thoughts for tuning up your own rhythm !
2023 SALES PLANNING
Check out our updated sales productivity site page. Just page down to get our new edition of Writing the Winning Sales Plan for 2023. Or you can just email me, and I will send you a free copy. Connect with me at any time for some quick ideas and feedback. There's never a cost for a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about Sales & Marketing.
www.derbymanagement.com
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.
