3 secrets to improve your sales performance
Published by Halifax Consulting – 15 June 2023
Sales success is not a matter of luck or magic…far from it! As in any other field, sales requires personal discipline, and there are a few secrets….
The best salespeople are often (if not always) selling…
Yes, you’d be surprised! But as you know, the more time you devote to sales, the more effective you’ll be. Ask yourself this question every time you start a new task: Does this task contribute to your progress towards a new sale? Experiment, and measure. Measure the time you really spend on what should be your #1 objective: Selling!
For many salespeople, this time is too little: when you take away the time spent “socializing”, going for a cigarette, getting a coffee, checking out your favorite social media, going to lunch, coming back from lunch, making a personal phone call or two, etc., there’s not much left! Salespeople devote just 28% of their week to actual selling. (Source: Salesforce Global Survey 2022). Surprisingly, with the spread of hybrid working for many salespeople, and therefore less travel time, one might have imagined an improvement in productivity. But this is not the case, as this rate of around 30% has remained unchanged for the 30 years that this type of study has been carried out!
The rule to follow is simple: the more time you spend in contact with your prospects and customers, the more business you do to fight this fatality!
Top sellers are stable in performance
You’ve already heard of the sales funnel concept, or the lead generation sales machine that miraculously feeds the sales force with qualified contacts. The logic of sales efficiency is implacable. The more contacts or “leads” you have, the more sales conversations you engage in, the more quotes you generate, the more sales you sign. Yet most salespeople experience a “roller-coaster ride”, alternating periods of intense sales activity with more or less prolonged dry spells. Not the best salespeople! They have the ability to keep their attention on all projects at the same time, moving their pawns forward so that all deals progress at the same rate through the sales cycle.
The best sellers do what it takes to stay…the best
The best salespeople know that they can only grow stronger by improving their key skills and talents at every stage of the sales cycle. That’s why they don’t hesitate to train, inform themselves and practice to become sharper, more efficient and more “professional” every day, when it comes to prospecting, reassuring, convincing, negotiating and closing!
In the end, they do no more or less than the best athletes, the best scientists, the best artists… They never stop nurturing and developing their talents! They are very focused on themselves and on what can help them perform better. A mix of curiosity and “sponge”.
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