What Do Successful Sales People Do?

July 20, 2017

Successful Salespeople Set Proper Expectations

In 100% of the companies that bring me in for sales training or sales management training, their sales management skills are 180 degrees out of whack! They suffer from the typical yo-yo sales environment, namely low morale, high turnover, eroding margins, excessive cancellations and change orders and customer complaints are managing RESULTS instead of PERFORMANCE!

What does that mean?

Without a gun, you and I cannot control what our prospects do. We cannot MAKE THEM reach for their checkbooks and open it up to us.

But we can control whether or not we

  • researched them

  • called them or knocked on their door or mailed them or connected with them online, and 

  • opened with a proven and tested script

  • befriended the receptionist and executive assistant

  • differentiated ourselves with how we engaged them, namely by

  • asking pertinent, relevant, thought-provoking questions of them that showed our expertise and competence, then

  • set a firm, mutually-agreed appointment, then

  • confirmed the agenda for that appointment

  • reviewed that agenda via email, then

  • reviewed that agenda when you sat down to meet.

What Sales Managers Do To Succeed

But every company I’ve ever worked at as an employee or consulted with manages based on results instead of performance. (In a way I’m glad because this means they need me. If they were doing it right I’d be out of a job!) This leads to “hockey stick” sales that all come at the end of the month or quarter at lower margins and higher stress.

What companies should do is manage performance and pay on results. When that new sales person shows up they should be told something along the lines of:

  • Your monthly sales target is $12,000 or $3,000 per week.

  • The average sale is $1,000 so you need to get three new clients a week.

  • The average closing ratio is 33%, which means you need 3 appointments to make a sale, which means you need to go on 9 appointments a week.

  • One out of every 4 appointments you make will cancel so you need to make 4 appointments to get 3, which means you need to set 12 appointments a week.

  • To get one appointment you must speak to 5 decision makers and follow this exact script, which means you must speak to 60 decision makers a week.

  • To reach 5 decision makers you must speak to 15 gatekeepers and follow this exact script.

  • To reach 15 gatekeepers you must make 35 calls a day and follow this exact script, and/or…

  • Go to three networking events a week and introduce yourself in this exact manner, and/or…

  • Give two talks a week on this topic to this audience with this exact call to action, and/or…

  • Mail 50 pieces of mail a week to these exact businesses with this exact call to action, and/or…

You get the point and you know it doesn’t happen this way.

Most of the time the hiring manager will say something like,

“You’re a big boy. You’ve been in this game long enough. You know what to do. Heck, when I started we didn’t even have cell phones or computers. Now go sell something!” and they go back into their office with their “open door policy” because your all “family.”

This is the beginning of the end for that sales rep and they just started! They are thoroughly confused and dejected because they see others making sales at the company but nothing has been codified so they’re not sure how to start, what to say and more importantly, what questions to ask.

Instead, they are given some nice brochures, they are briefed on all of the patents they have and the number of employees and how the founder started the company in her garage and they are told to go make sales. W. Edwards Deming is rolling over in his grave.

How well do you know your own numbers?

What kind of example are you setting for your sales staff?

Are you the bottleneck to your own success?

Can your 5-figure strategies get you to 6 or 7+ figure results?

Would you like a new perspective from someone that has made all of the mistakes and also won all of the awards in retail sales, business to business sales, business to government sales, business to consumer sales and the all important human being to human being sales?

Let me know you’re out there by starting with the Initial Process Assessment.

If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:

Good Selling,