Yo Yo Prospecting

We've all heard of Yo Yo Dieting.  You realise you've put on more weight than you want.  You starve yourself to get to your goal weight and, once there, go back to your old habits only to regain the weight.  So you diet again - a cycle doomed to repeat itself.

What yo-yo'ers endeavour to do is crash diet rather than make subtle long lasting changes to their approach to losing weight.  Eating less, eating healthy, exercising more.

A similar thing manifests itself in business development.  People are comfortable with a normal pipeline - they have work to do, things to focus on, they're busy.  It's comfortable.  Prospecting is a low priority as why focus on the birds in the bush when you have some in your hand.  It's hard and the pay offs are often not immediate.

Then, your pipeline dries up or has a sustained hole. Panic sets in - you start the Yo Yo Prospecting cycle.  Starved of business, you are forced to prospect, and quickly.  

Their pipeline eventually normalises (hopefully) and prospecting again goes on the back burner.  And thus the cycle begins.

What good sales people realise is prospecting is activity you do all the time.  The only thing that varies is how much you do based on your pipeline.   They know their sales cycle and how far ahead they need to be initiating prospecting contacts before they have a chance of securing the business.  If it takes you 6 months from initial contact to securing a new client - what chance do you have if you are sitting in a hole in your pipeline today?  

You prospect to fill the gaps in your pipeline, not because you're in one!  It is too late then.

Only a small change is required - set aside time each week to focus on this activity.  Treat it like an appointment.  Make those subtle long lasting changes today!  

Test That Rope

A man was passing some elephants and he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their back leg. No chains or no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.
 
He saw their trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Ever been guilty of this?  Most of us have at some point.

Many of us in sales either consciously or subconsciously hold on belief we can’t do something because we failed at it at some point in the past.  As a result, we avoid or resist being put in a position to do it again.  Worse, we sometimes undertake the activity, but with a negative mindset which often dooms us to failure.  Failure is a necessary part of learning – if you avoid failure, you inhibit your growth.   Failure only becomes an issue if you don’t learn from it – so by not doing something because you failed at it once – what are you learning?

What we can fail to take in to account is, like the elephant, our skill set and aptitude has likely grown and now we are actually able to do that which we previously failed at.  We allow our fear of failure to outweigh our rational thought we can do it.

Children exhibit this all the time – and, as parents, we support our children through this to show them that they can do it.  We know they can do it, we know they actually don’t need our help, but we stand by them.  Not necessarily to provide help, but to provide confidence and reassurance.  Slowly, over time, they stretch and break that rope.  As a sales manager, it is important to understand this as sales people can and do exhibit the same mindset around certain tasks.

Next time you find yourself saying you can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do this – ask yourself why you think this and whether it is actually true.

Test that rope!

Basket of Bananas

You may have read about the 5 monkeys experiment.  It goes like this:

This shows you the power of mindset and your frame of reference.  Growth and reward doesn’t always come from doing what others are doing (or not doing) and doing what you’ve always done

Cold calling is a great example of this in sales – most people, who wish to try cold calling as a sales skill will have people around them explaining why it is a pointless exercise.  How it doesn’t work, how clients don’t like it etc.  Yet often, the very people saying it doesn’t work aren’t using this skill effectively, if at all.

Therefore, through reinforcement, change becomes difficult.   Without this, sales teams become stale, doing the same (often mediocre) activities over and over.  They drive themselves to the bottom.

It requires someone with tenacity and belief to shrug these negative views off and try themselves.  Yes, they may fail – but they tried.  More importantly, they may succeed and slowly, over time, change their and their teams frame of reference.

Now – flip this on its head.  What if each time the monkey got to the top of the ladder, not only did they get the banana they thought they were going to get, but they were rewarded with a big basket of bananas to keep or share?  What behaviour would this drive?

Next time you say ‘that won’t work’, ‘we shouldn’t try that’, ‘our customers won’t relate to that’ consider…

Yes, sometimes you may get sprayed with water.  However, you may just be missing out on that basket of bananas because you said you couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t or worse, working to prevent someone else getting it.

The Unhappy Sales Person

Do you know one?  Are you one?

Sales is a stressful area - you are very much like the proverbial olden day hunter.  Finding, stalking and dispatching your prey for the rest of your community to survive.  Failure means hunger or, in extreme situations, worse.

However, unlike the hunting analogy, in modern terms nataural selection doesn't always weed out the unsuccessful hunter.  Some turn in to the unhappy sales person.

Like this hunter however, they often only have themselves to blame.  The prey is still there, it may move, be smaller, be more cunning and be a focus for more hunters, but it is still there.  It is their own shortcomings that is creating the unhappiness. 

How do you become a happy sales person?

• Learn from the good 'hunters' - this is how we've always learnt.  In the hunting analogy, children of the village learned and watched the elders.  You should too.  Find a successful sales mentor (real or virtual) and leverage their knowledge.  Every challenge in sales has been encountered by others - why try to solve it yourself from scratch?
• Stop making excuses.  Most excuses in sales are externally projected internal issues.  'My customers won't like that', 'No one does this', 'Cold Calling doesn't work' - are your own excuses, not those of your clients.  When unhappy in sales, it is easy to blame others.  Look at your reasons/excuses and determine which are real and which are your own roadblocks.
• Practice.  Whether in real terms in front of targets or in role playing situations - practice your craft.  You don't get better at sales by not selling.  Revise your mindset that you aren't making mistakes, you're learning.  This goes hand in hand with learning from others. 
• Do more of it.  One kill doesn't maketh the hunter - doing it regular does.  Good sales people sell whether busy, whether quite, whether happy or sad.  It's awfully difficult to succeed in sales if you're not selling very often  You don't win every opportunity, so why not have plenty of opportunities?  Like practice, there's no better training than game time.
• Reflection and Feedback.  Mistakes only become a problem if you don't learn from them - we've all heard this.  However, similarly, successes are hard to repeat if we don't reflect on why we succeeded.  Review your wins and losses.  Ask those around you for feedback.  Growth comes from this process.

Do you want to stay unhappy?  Whilst you may not like being unhappy, it often feels easier to stay there than the effort required to change.  Worse, sometimes you don't even see yourself as unhappy so see no need to change.

Ever watch Kitchen Nightmares?  Most people hate the position their business is in, resist all attempts to fix it and then, when out the other side, wonder why they didn't change earlier and, suddenly, love what they're doing.  Yes, they may have to work harder and differently - but the reward more than offsets the extra effort.

It's all a choice.  So why choose to be unhappy?

Mean It!

Sales training is something we've all undertaken and, in essence, it is what this content is about.

We've spent hours working through the sales process, its various stages and how to deal with objections throughout.

Often, this is distilled down to either a hard script (exactly what you say) or a soft script (a framework) to help sales people work their way through to a successful conclusionwith their clients

Many of us have worked with sales people who can, with seeming ease, pick up a phone, ring a client they've never spoken to before and secure a meeting.  With enthusiasm, and after talking to them, we follow their script and ring and fail.

Similarly, we've all worked with the person who says anything to close the sale.  Sometimes they get caught out directly in their manipulations but whether they get caught out or not, everyone knows and their credibility is affected.

Why is this?

Success in sales doesn't come from blindly following a script, prescribed process or self serving sales.  Real success comes in sales not through saying the right things, it comes through meaning them!

Believe what you say, deliver on what you say, mean what you say.

  

Sales Process Milestones - Don't Forget Advocacy!

Often in sales - there is considerable focus on where a prospect or client sits within a pipeline.  More often than not, this is to help the business determine the likelihood of this potential business becoming real business and, therefore, revenue.  What is often not focused on is how this shapes the conversations and activity you undertake as a sales person.

A very important aspect of the sales process/pipeline that is overlooked is not just the importance of which stage the client is in, but the milestones throughout the process.  Before discussing the stages - let's spend some time on the milestones as these shape the discussions within the stages.

There are 4 main milestones that exist within the sales process:

Target Becomes Prospect

Many sales people have lists of names of 'ideal' businesses. At this point these names are just targets.  Many people protect these lists vigorously - but some actually struggle to act on them.

The first milestone is when this targets becomes a prospect.  For this to happen you have to engaged with the target and open lines of communication with them to continue talking (however irregular).  They can only become a prospect if you have this ability to continue to talk to them.  If they say 'go away' - they remain a target until you enter regular communication to create value (the next stage).

Prospect Becomes Opportunity

Following continued discussion with your prospect and through creating and demonstrating value - one of two things should happen.  You either figure out you can't do business with the prospect (this is a very real part of the sales process and how you deal with this is important and discussed later) or, ideally, your prospect turns in to an Opportunity and permission to provide a proposal for their business - whether formally or not.


Opportunity Becomes Client

Then, ideally, you have demonstrated enough value to your prospect that they accept yor proposal and become your client.  This is often the main focus for mainly businesses and sales managers - turning prospects in to clients.

What many forget is this isn't the last milestone at all.  The next milestone is often overlooked or forgotten - but is incredibly important.

Clients Become Advocates

Here, your new clients advocate your offering to others - whether unprovoked or at your asking.  They endorse your credibility to others.  This milestone is important for three main reasons.  First, focusing on advocacy ensures a sales orientated business doesn't forget the clients it won yesterday in lieu of the tomorrows targets.  You deliver the promises made.  Second, advocates continue to do business with you and stay with you.  They form long term relationships around qualitative factors (like people) not just product, service and price.  And, finally, they can fuel your pipeline.  They will introduce and refer so others in their circle can experience the same service.

Milestones v Stages

It is always important to remember 2 things about the sales process: 

1. Milestones are important.  Sure, the stage a client is in shapes how you should be interacting with a client but the milestone is the goal.   The stage provides the direction, the milestone the destination.
2. Don't ever assume the sales pipeline finishes at 'Client' or 'Deal Won' - it doesn't.  Advocacy is the final step - and it lasts for a very very long time. 

Don't win clients or business, win advocates.  Keep advocates.  Focus on this milestone in the sales process and not only will you succeed in the long term, but your clients will as well.
 

Sales Pipeline - Milestones and Stages