Get Your Sales on Track--How to Create a Sales Checklist
It’s always easier to complete a project when you have a checklist. Why should sales be any different?
To ensure you stay on the right path to sales success, you should create a monthly "sales checklist." Here’s a sales checklist for January:
___I know who my ideal prospect is.
You want to make the process of going after more new business as easy as possible. Here’s how. Ideal prospects are those prospects who are most likely to want and need what you have to sell.
Your first step is to identify who those prospects have been in the past. Unless you are going to change something about what you sell or how you sell, it’s unlikely that you will find a different ideal prospect than what's been ideal in the past. Your job this year is to find more prospects who are similar to your ideal prospect. You will focus on these prospects and exclude those that don’t match.
It may seem counterintuitive to limit your selling, but it works. This year you want to avoid having deals that never close.
___I can prioritize my accounts with criteria I’ve defined.
All accounts are not created equal; each one doesn’t deserve the same amount of your time. The only way to prioritize your accounts is to determine the criteria that you will use in your sales territory.
Criteria that you can use can include demographics (data) or psychographics (how people think). Consider demographics like volume, location, client age, size of facility, age of business, stage of growth, or revenue potential. Psychographics could include risk taking, need for status, or whether the buyer is a spender or saver.
Once you’ve defined your criteria, you can begin to prioritize accounts.
___I have prioritized my accounts into A, B, and C accounts.
Look at each criterion and develop three categories for each one. "A" accounts should have the best/highest category of each criterion. For example, if "Revenue" is one of your criteria, then an "A" account could be assigned "revenue greater than $10,000,000," a "B" account could be "revenue between $5,000,000 and $9,999,000," and a "C" account could be "revenue between $3,000,000 and $4,999,999."
Note: you will not be prospecting accounts whose revenue is below $3,000,000. Everyone is not a prospect and you don’t want to waste your time. You need to be clear which prospects and accounts are the most important--they will be "A" accounts according to the criteria you identified.
___I have enough prospects.
First, look at your sales goals. Now look at your prospect list of prospects who are hopefully very close to your ideal prospect. What is the projected sales volume or revenue potential of each prospect? Does the total exceed your sales goal by at least 20 percent? It’s unlikely that you’ll sell every single prospect; you need to build in a cushion so you can meet your sales goals this year.
Complete this sales checklist. Work on the items you were unable to check. Completing this checklist is the best way to get on track so you can meet your sales goals this year.
