Month 2: Your February Sales Checklist for Sales Success
One month down, eleven more to go to meet your sales goals. Here’s your sales checklist for February to ensure your sales success:
1. Find a mentor.
A mentor is someone you can talk with when you need an unvarnished opinion and expert advice. You might not always take the advice, but you do need to hear another point of view so you can make the decision that is right for you.
The time to get a mentor is not when you need one. The time to get a mentor is when you know you have tough sales challenges to meet and you realize that another good perspective will allow you to make better decisions.
Not every talented businessperson makes a great mentor. You should look for someone you like, someone who has demonstrated thinking that you admire, and someone who returns your calls. After all, you want an answer when you need it, not weeks later.
2. Check your sales process.
Do you create your sales call schedule at the beginning of every week? If yes, you need to examine your sales process; this method is inefficient and you’re wasting time. You learned for your January sales checklist to prioritize accounts. Now your job is to allocate your time according to the priority of the account.
It’s enough to segment your business into A, B, and C accounts. Now you need to determine how much time each quarter you will allocate to each type of account: A, B, and C. You should group your prospects and customers geographically so you’re not wasting time on needless travel. Create “zones” within your territory. Assign the zone for each of your customers and prospects.
Get out your calendar. Start to schedule all your A accounts. For example, if you determine that you will call on A accounts each month, schedule them all in your calendar for the year. B accounts might warrant sales calls six times a year--schedule them. C accounts might get sales calls once a quarter. Look at the location of each account so you can add the account to the zone where you are already scheduled.
So now at the beginning of each week you already have your schedule made. You can certainly prospect to fill in unscheduled time or do office work or other strategic work to fill your time. You should also confirm all appointments in advance if you know that some customers travel or are often unavailable. You don’t want to waste your time.
3. Work on yourself.
What’s something you could learn that would make you a better sales professional? One idea is rereading some of your company literature on products you rarely sell; you might realize that there are products you've forgotten to sell that you can be selling this year.
Is there some aspect of business that would make you better able to serve your customers and prospects? Check out a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and see if there’s one you can take. You become needed when you know more than your customers or prospects. Become the person they seek out for information that they don’t have time to look up themselves.
You’ve got a lot of time to make sure this is a year you will be proud of. Your success is not going to happen by itself. Start work on your February sales checklist and you are more likely to end the year with more sales.
