Are You Sabotaging Your Own Sales?
Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How many leads did you run this week?
These questions are relentlessly driven into salespeople's heads, and for good reason. For many sales professionals, there is often pressure to reach quota or attain a certain level of performance. But while having a monthly sales goal keeps your focus on the end result, it may actually do more harm than good.
I often hear salespeople say they aren't getting results. At the end of each selling month, frustrated and stressed-out salespeople scramble to close sales so they can meet their numbers. If selling is, in part, a transference of feeling, imagine the feelings you're transferring to your prospects when you're in this frame of mind. The stress and anxiety of having to close more sales puts undue pressure on your prospects and fosters an unhealthy relationship.
The irony is, the constant push to reach sales numbers keeps you hooked on the goal and diverts your efforts from refining your sales process so it can generate more business. The dilemma becomes, "I'm too busy to work on my process. I have numbers to meet!"
What if you shifted your attention away from your quota or end result and onto the process? After all, the result is a natural byproduct of the process. By focusing on the process, you can attain your goals.
Do you have processes in place -- for sales, prospecting, follow-up, time management, customer service -- that work for you? When you look at your daily schedule, does it outline specific and measurable tasks you need to do to move towards your goal?
Chances are, salespeople who are solely focused on the end result don't have a solid process in place. But trying to achieve your goals without a process to guide you is like driving from New York to California without a road map. Not only is it stressful, but you're bound to wind up somewhere other than your intended destination.
To boost your sales, become process driven rather than results driven. Figure out what daily activities will help you reach your sales goal. What skills or tools need further development? For example, you may need to refine your introductory cover letter or email, create a solid template for your prospecting and voice mail approach, and increase the frequency of follow-up calls.
Once you have outlined a path and a success formula to follow -- X number of calls produces X number of prospects which produces X number of sales -- focus on the process instead of the end result. When you're mindful of the process, you have the opportunity to recognize and to celebrate your daily accomplishments -- even the little ones -- rather than waiting until the "end." Because when do we ever get there?
