“Sales” is a challenging profession. It comes with mountainous highs, and deep lows. Throw in a hefty set of expectations from management (and your family) and you have the potential for a pressure cooker job.
I am constantly reminded of the Alec Baldwin’s quote in the sales movie “Glenngary Glenn Ross”, where Baldwin’s character, during part of a SERIOUSLY foul mouthed ‘motivational’ rant, simulates a washed up sales person drinking a cocktail, and lamenting on how sales is a hard…”Oh yeah, I used to be a salesman, it’s a tough racket”.
So what are some easy steps you can take to keep your manager off of your back, and the money coming in? Surprisingly, it has little to do with cold calls, and slick ‘closing techniques’. It has everything to do with organization, goal setting and consistency.
Organize your sales opportunities! It surprises me how many sales people and sole proprietors do not utilize a sales management tool like ACT! Or Goldmine. In our office, we use CRMTrak. It is simple, and basically a stripped down version of Salesforce. For a small price of $30 a month, I have one location for all of my contacts, sales opportunities, and reminders. In the morning I log in, and if I promised you I would call you on “Thursday of next week” it will pop up a red reminder to call you on that day. In the hustle of a particular week, I probably wouldn’t remember to call you on Thursday (Sorry, but it’s true!) This system is great for reminders and allows me to shut work off when I leave the office, so I’m not constantly thinking “did I call everyone I needed to call today”. (It also keeps all my contacts handy, organized, and allows me to print sales reports for my manager).
I had a fantastic sales manager that introduced me to goal setting a few years ago. He would say
“Jason, how many calls are you going to make this week?”
“How many client appointments are you going to schedule this week?”
“How many client meetings are you going to attend this week?”
“How many proposals are you going to send out this week?”
“How many networking functions are you going to participate in this week?”
We would flush out all of these numbers, determine how many of those tasks we would need to do on a daily basis, and write it down and track it. (He liked a spreadsheet, I’m a whiteboard guy).
When you roll into the first day of the month and you think “Oh my GOSH, I have to close $30,000 in business this month” it can be somewhat debilitating. Take that same first day of the month and say “Oh, I only have to see 2 clients today and schedule 3 appointments. I only need to make 10 calls, and send out 1 proposal.” It is much less stressful! If you meet most or all of your daily goals, you know your day was productive. After you track your numbers for several months, you can look at your successes and decide if you need to tweak your weekly goals to give you the results you are seeking. That way, you are not on the roller coaster of emotions (happy when you close deal—upset if you didn’t). You can stay focused on your daily goals, which should produce results.
The most challenging aspect of sales for me is keeping information organized. I think whatever gene I possess for sales, cancels out the gene for organization. If I didn’t use these tools and techniques, I would be betting all of my success on my personality or luck. Those factors help, however they only get you to a certain level as a sales professional. There are already innate pressures and unknown factors in sales, and you owe it to yourself and your employer to set goals and stick with them.
After you implement these techniques, let me know if this takes some of the ‘challenge’ out of your sales job.
