Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘action plan’

Harris Poll just released a new survey about what U.S. adults want.  The results were interesting.

• 43% want to be rich
• 21% want to be thinner
• 14% want to be smarter
• 12% want to be younger

So if the majority of those polled want to be rich, then what is keeping them from achieving that goal? Maybe they are confusing wishing with wanting by hoping for a magic Genie to appear and rub the golden lamp?

Possibly by looking at sales research, this may help explain this gap between wishing and doing.

• 50% of all sales leads are left withering on the vine
• 90% of all sales are made after the third contact
• 20% of all sales people make four or more contacts

The answer appears to lie within each individual. Possibly why some fail to achieve what they want be it to be rich or to increase sales, may have to do with not learning some basic concepts to actually having some basic tools. For example how many people have a:

• Written action plan?
• Proven goal achievement process?
• Doable goal worksheet?
• Process or formula for sustainable results?
• System to keep the negative talk or self doubts at bay?
• Knowledge of their talents?

Being able to be rich or increase sales can happen provided you make it happen. When individuals take personal responsibility and accountability for their actions, then results will begin to be realized.

P.S. In my book, Be the Red jacket in the sea of gray suits, the Keys to Unlocking Sales Success, these issues of having a plan to understanding one’s talents are discussed along with providing additional resources.

Sales research indicating:

• 50% of all sales leads are left to wither on the vine to die
• 80% of all salesperson stop after the 3rd contact
• 30%-70% of all sales targets are not achieved

What this suggests to me is there is a just a lot of plain laziness out there in the marketplace and very few people are talking about this using this word.

Laziness is so prevalent in our society (U.S.) I am surprised that anything gets down.  The majority of people are born both mentally and physically fit.  However due to a variety of reasons, laziness takes over. With the prevalent entitlement mentality, productivity suffers while other costs such as health care to the price of retail goods continue to spiral upward.  The U.S. and even Britain’s obesity rates confirm this change in behavior and the additional costs.

Just look at the parking lot of any grocery or retail store. How many carts are left stranded in parking places because someone was just to darn lazy to return the cart to one of those cart holding stands?

This laziness also has a much deeper meaning and that is total, 100% disrespect for all those other shoppers who have to weave around those unintended shopping carts.  (Think ethics and beliefs) Heavens forbid if it is a windy day and a sudden gust takes the cart and slams it into your vehicle or worse yet child! My sense is many of those lazy people would be the first to complain if their car damaged or their child harm by a stray shopping cart.

When people are lazy in sales, in  business and in life, their behaviors affect everyone else because of their poor business ethics. This is why it is important to focus on what you can control and have an action plan to support that focus.

As one final note for this Friday’s editorial, if you choose to be lazy, then do not expect others to pick up your slack.  For you have 100% of what actions you take from picking up that phone to call a potential customer to what food you place into your mouth.  Personal responsibility and accountability are key attributes or talents not only for professional sales people but everyone else as well.

To reach your potential customers (a.k.a. prospects) demands some sort of communication within the marketplace where you solicit your products and services. There are many definitions for this specific type of business communication however I prefer the one I shared in Be the Red Jacket (page 36):

Marketing is both a strategy (thought) and a tactic (action) to create constant awareness and promotion of your products and services with the desired results of having potential customers (also known as prospects):

• Consider your products and services
• Become your clients or customers

The beginning of marketing resides in research to understand what is happening in the marketplace:

• From economic trends to Internet keyword searches
• Who are your most likely customers (demographics)
• How do they make those buying decisions (psychographics), etc.

Once this information is gathered then some innovative leaders will jump into creating a goal driven marketing action plan. However that may be a bit premature.

What would happen if instead an executive marketing summary would be created similar to the executive summary in your overall strategic growth action plan?  Executive business coaching tip:  Without a written, goal driven strategic action plan you are playing the role of Captain Wing It instead of Captain Focus It.

Robert Middleton explains this concept in many of his marketing workshops.  This document essentially summarizes the core positioning statement.  The outcome is a foundation for a cohesive message in all of your marketing which further enhances your branding.

Theodore Hesburgh is quoted as “You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” Your executive marketing summary helps to make sure your marketing message is on tune and encourages people to connect with you to learn more about your products and services.

P.S. Confusion abounds in business – Read this week’s business column.

Is professional development (self improvement) part of your goal to increase sales?

Yes, I know you are busy, there is not enough minutes in the day, you are working with more demands and less resources and worse yet your company does not provide any additional sales training coaching (self improvement) opportunities.  However, maybe this story may help you to reconsider the importance of a professional development action plan.

Two lumberjacks in the late 1800’s were vying for a coveted prize – a top of the line quality axe.  Each had to fell a very tall tree with many branches. At 8:00am, the starting gun discharged and both men began scrambling up their respective trees.  Then about 20 minutes later one of the lumberjacks came down and disappeared for about 5  minutes. He reappeared, scrambled up the tree and resumed cutting. Another 20 minutes later, he came down again, disappeared and came back in 5  minutes. This behavior continued all morning long and into the afternoon.

By noon, the crowd was quite confused since the other lumberjack was significantly ahead.  Then as the shadows started growing, the tide began to turn in favor of the man who took a break every 20 minutes.  Suddenly, one of the trees fell. The winner was indeed the lumberjack who stopped every 20 minutes.

When he received his prize, he was asked about his somewhat strange behavior.  The man smiled and replied that to win the prize the blade of his axe had to be at its best. To achieve that goal, he had to keep it sharp and so his breaks were devoted to honing the blade on his axe.

Now think about you as a salesperson. Substitute cutting the tree as earning a sale. The coveted prize is your commission.  Your axe is your selling skills.  How sharp are those skills?  Possibly the reason you are not realizing your goal to increase sales is because your sales skills are dull. Sales Training Coaching Tip: You are responsible for your own self improvement and professional development first and foremost.

There are many resources from daily to weekly ezines to free ebook on sales in today’s technology driven society that can help you keep your sales skills sharp. Of course you may need to assess those marketing and selling skills and again there are free assessments to more formal ones such as the Attribute Index.

Henry Ford best summed up life with these words:  “If you think you can or you think you cannot, either way you are right.” My only 2 cents if you think you can, then ensure that positive thought with a action plan to turn those thoughts into measurable results.

Years ago a colleague, Laura Novakowski, shared this simple philosophy with me.  When you speak, make sure your words are kind, truthful and necessary. She became aware of this through another colleague, Ray Overdorff ( truly learned and self made man).

Sai Baba a 19th century who was considered by some controversial was quoted as saying:  “Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?”

In marketing, these three filters for business ethics could also be applied. How many times are businesses required to pull back on their claims (marketing messages) because of  “truth in advertising” from cereals to over the counter and prescription drugs?

During the last two decades if not longer respective to election campaigning, how many potential voters have been turned off by all the negative advertisements? Then we have all the micro blogs to full blogs where comments are made that are mean spirited (not kind) because people believe it makes for good conversation.

This all leads back to have a written values statement that clearly articulates those behaviors you will demonstrate 24/7.  Of course, even if you have one, that does not automatically guarantee your behaviors are in alignment as noted in a past blog on plagiarism.

Consider returning to your existing strategic growth action plan and invest the time to revise if necessary your values statement or write one if you do not have one.

P.S. Here is my values statement taken from my main website:

“….values will continually raise the B.A.R. for our clients and stakeholders

• Build long term relationships
• Achieve sustainable results
• Results that deliver positive return on investment

Daily behaviors will demonstrate creativity, faith, gratitude, intelligence, innovation, intuition, learning, patience, quality work, reflection, respect, risk taking and thoughtfulness as we work with our clients and meet new individuals. “

In a previous post, Sales Skills – What Is Missing in Sales Training Coaching, the discussion focused on what is missing respective to education based marketing and relationship selling. If we looked at the basics of what are needed to be a top performer, the first bucket would be the ability to set, plan and achieve goals. Unfortunately, this one word – goal – has almost become “dirty” tainted with failed efforts and has started a negative self-fulling prophecy or belief within many salespersons.

If we look at this objectively, the first question to be raised is how many people have learned how to turn their dreams into reality? There is a presumption that this ability is learned through osmosis.  Stand next to a high achiever and magically you will become one.  Hogwash! Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Invest the time to learn a proven goal achievement process.

Beyond not understanding the overall process, many adopted the SMART goals criteria and equally as many probably failed given sales research suggests 30% to 70% of all targets are not achieved.

Years ago I realized in my sales career as an entrepreneur that the SMART goal setting criteria just were not enough.  The reason for this was so many sales targets continued to be missed.

As I pondered the reason for this performance failure, I realized the following about goals:

• They must be written down.
• They must be aligned to a plan of action.
• They must be owned by the individual.

From this Ah-Ha moment, I added the following 3 letters before the SMART criteria – WAY.  When goals are Written down, Aligned to a plan of action and Yours . Sales Training Coaching Tip: Using a proven goal achievement worksheet only strengthens this overall process.

Beyond the first 4 letter dirty word, plan is second one.  For without a plan, there is no alignment between where I am and where I want to be.  After all, the goal is just a bridge to move the person forward.

Again, being a simple salesperson, I created a one page business growth action plan that was supported by other one page action plans including sales and marketing. Note:  Given that many people would not accept nor understand a selling action plan, I have intentionally used the word sales in this instance to mean selling.

Finally,  I came to realize that these two words – do it – but when said fast sound like one word, keep so many from sales success.  Research continues to suggest that 50% of all sales leads are left hanging on the vine, just withering away.  Follow-up from business networking events to actual leads be them inbound or outbound stops after the third contact for 90% of all salespersons.

As the specific talents originating from these 4 dirty words are:

• Long range planning
• Project and goal focus
• Quality orientation
• Realistic goal setting for others
• Seeing potential problems

The challenge is most people do not know if these are their talents and how can they measure progress over a 12 month time frame. Just imagine the possibilities if you knew your talents and could work far more efficiently and effectively? This just might help you stop “confusing motion with progress and activity with results” as my colleague Doug Brown has so often said.

Of course there are more talents necessary for success when in engaged in relationship selling. In future postings these will be discussed as well as what each talent means.

The BP Oil Spill and the resignation of General McChrystal are real world examples of ineffective communication.  These public relations nightmares lead to challenges about executive leadership as well as overall strategy (thinking), structure, processes, incentives & rewards along with people. (Jay Galbraith 5 Star Model for Organizational Development)

Effective communication requires the following:

• Consistency – Same well constructed message (Note: Consistency should not be confused with “talking points.”)
• Commitment – Everyone is on board to deliver the message. When questions are asked, honest responses are given including “I do not know, but I will get back to you in 24 hours.” (Note: This is a reflection of the positive core values from within the business strategic action plan and business ethics within the organization.)
• Clarity – The message is easily understood and without any double speak.  When a closed ended question is asked, the response is Yes, No or I do not know instead of the standard open ended, vague responses.

Failed communication is usually the indication there is something amiss within any organization because for people to perform their jobs requires direction either verbally or non-verbally through written documents. When communication begins to fail, this is not the time for denial, but rather the time to assess the organization to learn what is driving this problem.

Business Coaching Tip: Remember, poor communication is always a symptom and never the real problem. This is why having a proven assessment aligned to known standards is required to bring clarity to the real problem.

Noted business guru Peter Drucker said the function of business is to “attract and maintain customers.” If we peel away the essence of Drucker’s words, it suggests that the customer experience is fundamental foundation to the function of business.  Yet, how many times are customers both external and internal turned off by their experiences?

For example, Southwest Airlines has become a model for customer loyalty. The goal of management  is to immerse new employees into their culture. Sales Training Coaching Tip: The culture is the known and anticipated experiences of all shareholders.

Another blog post at B2B Marketing Insider suggested the 5 tips for improving customer loyalty. The main point is that businesses should consider “cultivating satisfied and engaged employees”. (Source: Michael Brenner)

This is a great point, except I believe it should not be limited to employees, but to all who enter the organization or business. Management should start with the employees as Southwest Airlines has done, but then gone beyond those points of connection (think experiences) to the external buyers of your products and services.

By taking this action, you may gain greater clarity about how the customer experience can determine customer loyalty (think maintain) which will increase sales, dramatically improve profits and decrease operating costs.

Sales Training Coaching Tip: If management or if that means you  do not have a written strategic business growth action plan and a separate sales growth action plan, this is probably the best place to start otherwise you may be engaged in Captain Wing It behaviors.

Social media is the newest marketing vehicle. Great! Yet some of those who are engaged in  selling, social media training  and marketing in general continue to shout the cries that this activity cannot be measured.

Credit: Hastac.ning

Baloney, a real big baloney! For unless something gets measured, it cannot get managed. So, yes Margaret, there are metrics for this newest messaging platform or vehicle.

A great article on social media measurement and return on investment by Amber Naslund of Attitude Branding provided 13 truths about the metrics and the why for these.

What is interesting to note is these excuses use for not being able to measure the results from social media marketing efforts are about the same for many other initiatives or challenges in business.  For example, how many times have you heard or maybe even thought that:

• Training and development cannot be measured?
• Customer loyalty cannot be measured?
• Employee loyalty cannot be measured?
• Productivity cannot be measured?
• Customer acquisition cost cannot be measured?
• Sales leads costs cannot be measured?
• Marketing actions cannot be measured?

What this really boils down to is have a belief about written goals and then an action plan to achieve those goals.

Far too many people as my friend Bill Napolitano has stated are playing Captain Wing It.  These folks, as I have often said. “are spraying and praying their actions all over the place with the hope that something will stick.” No wonder they are like all the other gray suits and never will be a Red Jacket, someone who stands out in the crowd.

Take the time to read this great post by Amber and see where else you may be making excuses as to why you cannot get the results you want. Maybe you are not investing the time to determine the metrics, monitor those numbers and analyze them for any necessary course corrections.  Remember, even Santa sometimes had to change his flight path.

To increase sales does require finding new customers or having repeat customers engage in repeat business. Yet, sometimes the fit is just not right even if the potential customer (a.k.a. prospect) is qualified by meeting these criteria:

• Decision maker
• Need
• Allocated budget
• Urgency
• Commitment

Recently a colleague and I through a strategic alliance presented a statement of work to a small business owner who was very much the the E-Myth decision maker. He was going through a merger and acquisition process without any written strategic business plan.  Actually, he had run his company without any formalized written action plan not to mention the lack of written policies and procedures. Given the depth of this merger, I knew he had already invested thousands of dollars between legal and accounting fees.

Even though he recognized that he should have started months before during the sales presentation, he still did not take action. (My sense is level of commitment is not where he said it was.)

Yes, the financial impact was verbalized as well as several other disconnects specific to his current operations at this meeting. In fact I learned this company was bleeding all over the place and reminded me of Gary Sutton’s chapter in his book Corporate Canaries about how you cannot outgrow losses.  I truly love this gem of a book.

Given that I am not a high pressure salesperson and do follow a pretty solid sales process, I realized that this person is probably not the type of client I truly want. Even when the facts are presented, here is someone who will not take action. And if he does make a decision, he will expect immediate results even though he has sat on the sidelines for several months. Reminds me of the quote about “lack of planning” or “procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”

My father who was a professional salesperson told me many years ago that yes it would be nice to earn every sale, but sometimes that simply just does not happen even when you do everything right. This is when you need to reflect on what you could have done if anything else and then let it go as a lesson learned.

Dad’s words are very true and made me recognize once again that my best sales success is with innovative leaders (key word here is innovative) who truly want to change their team’s results. So if you fail to earn a sale (some prefer to use the phrase close a sale) then take the time to honestly review what you did and what you could have done differently. Then move on to that next potential customer with another lesson learned in your sales toolbox.