Professional salespeople control their own destiny, no matter what. Here’s one good way.
It’s another lovely Kansas City day, and I just finished interviewing a candidate for a sales job. His candidacy was really over within the first couple of minutes after he described his separation from a previous job. He explained, “Well, the sales kept falling, so they had to cut me.” I asked, “You’re a salesman – isn’t it your job to KEEP the sales from falling?” He said, “Well, uh, yeah, but, the economy….stimulus went away….bids…” Finally he admitted that he had not altered his activity in response to a changing marketplace; he just kept responding to bids without noticing that there were fewer of them and he was getting a lower percentage.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m getting very tired of listening to salespeople who can find everyone and everything to blame for their lack of achievement except themselves. Here’s reality, and I’ve said this before: Quantity of Activity multiplied by Quality of Activity = Results. Do external economic conditions affect this ratio? Sure. If you must, include a multiplier in there for current economic conditions. All that means is that, to succeed, you must alter either the quantity or quality of your activity to generate the same, or better, results. Let’s talk about the basic ways that salespeople can succeed.
All sales activities eventually fall into one of three buckets – Acquisition (the selling of new customers),Development (the selling of additional products or services to existing customers), or Retention (hanging on to what you have). Whatever the scope of your company, region, or territory, these are the three things you have available to you to grow the business. How do you determine what to do and how to direct your efforts?
For me, I always start by trying to figure out which accounts are basically retention accounts. A retention account is an account that currently spends money, but that is unlikely to spend more, even with significantly more sales input; i.e. they are at or close to capacity with us. We like these accounts, and we want to hang onto them, but it’s a waste of time to come up with new and different selling initiatives. For whatever reason, they just don’t have the capacity to buy significantly more.
That will narrow your targeted customer list. Now, let’s look for good development accounts. A development account is one that does have the capacity to buy more – maybe a lot more – from you, if you apply the appropriate selling effort. What does it take to develop the account? There are a few things you should answer about these accounts:
First, what other items or categories do they have the capacity to buy, that you aren’t selling them? I find it helpful to try to attach a forecast here.
Second, what new contacts do you need to make in order to make a selling effort on these additional products? I find that normally, the reason that salespeople don’t sell more stuff to their customers is that they lack the necessary contacts and relationships to do so. Time to develop them.
Finally, what is the profitability of the effort? Will the time invested be worth it when the result is generated? If not, the account may be better thought of as a retention account.
Now it’s time to look at your Acquisition efforts. For some of you – especially if you don’t have a lot of good Development prospects – this may be your major thrust. Target some new accounts, pick up the phone, and start making the calls. Ultimately, I always say that the Acquisition step is the step where salespeople really take their destiny in their own hands.
You may find it necessary to also increase the Quality of your sales activity. This is where sales training, or books, or other reading material can come in handy. Part of being a pro is knowing when you need help; this is also taking your destiny in your own hands.
There are a lot of salespeople out there who never do, in fact, take their destiny in their own hands. I interview them frequently as part of my sales recruiting practice because they are seeking the next company to carry them for awhile. Real salespeople control their own destiny. So if you’re wondering what to do next in this economy, pick up the phone, make some contacts, and sell something. At the end of the day, the willingness to do this is what it really takes to succeed in selling.
