From time to time you’ll close a monster deal!

With this you’ll most likely hit 25% of yearly sales target with one piece of business.

But do you continually go after whales all of the time at the expense of smaller fish?

My advice is that your pipeline should consist of both.

The reason being is that to bag a large deal normally takes you a lot longer time to close and they take up a lot of your attention usually at the expense of the smaller deals.

That’s not to say that you should not go for them, but you should have both in your pipeline.

For example, to get the deal which made 25% of your yearly target it may have taken you 60% of your time  to get it so it puts you under pressure then to make up the difference.

Make sure that your prospecting strategy includes approaches to big fish as well as small fish.

The big fish will give you a fantastic feast but after a while you’ll go hungry. Whereas a steady supply of little tiddlers interspersed with the odd whale will keep you full all year round!

Happy Hunting!

Sean

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

Whether we admit it or not it’s a great boost to your ego when you win a sale.

But there’s no room for egos in the sales process!

Here’s why…

You see, when you approach a sale as a “WIN-LOSE” event you lose the need to have the prospects best interests at heart in favour of winning the business.

Your ego takes over.

Your ego wants you to look good, to talk the most, to be right and ultimately to win but in sales this is not always the case.

Both you and your prospects need to look good, the prospect more so. Your prospect should be doing most of the talking not you and you need WIN-WIN outcomes where you BOTH feel like you’ve got the best end of the deal.

It goes right against what your EGO wants!

Oh, ok, I’ll admit it - I have a big EGO! But I leave it at the door when it comes to a sales interaction.

The only outcome on my mind is to get what’s right for the prospect even if it means walking away - and I am deadly serious about that.

So, lose the EGO and focus on your prospect’s needs and wants and watch your sales fly!

Happy EGO losing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling

MTD Sales Training

Oh come on….I did say I had an EGO!

If you want to really max out your sales then you need to approach your selling as though you’re a trusted advisor.

This goes far beyond the call of duty of a “typical sales person”.

Instead, you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, the “GO TO” person for whatever you sell.

And it goes far beyond what you sell too. I’m flattered to be called a leader in my field by the press and other sources and I receive requests from my clients ranging from “Do you know anyone who could help us with IT?” through to “Could you help us to set up some joint ventures?”

I can tell you that the list is endless!

But in order to achieve this “status” in the marketplace, you’ve got to put the hard, long hours in.

You should be centred on your clients and prospects at all times. I send them any articles I see in the papers, any free resources I am privvy too, any latest news I pick up from my travels and anything I feel will be of benefit to them.

Of course, when I meet with them I know my stuff and the ongoing support I provide for them takes me/MTD into partnership status instead of third party supplier.

And that’s exactly the position you need to get to. And like always if you want any advice on this please just click here with your scenario and I’ll be happy to give you some pointers.

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat - The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

I received a great question in my inbox last week that was from a salesman whose results were taking a dip yet his sales closing ratio was just as high as normal, the pipeline was a full as it ever was and his appointment setting ratios were higher than normal. 

"Please help me identify where I am going wrong Sean?" was his plea!

Here are my thoughts on this…

Personally, I’m a numbers junkie. I like to know every single stat and number of my selling.

Why?

Well, that’s easy.

You see, if you can split out your sales process into 8 different steps (for example) and you can measure each one then when I’m not getting the results I want I can analyse each one of those steps and see where the bottlenecks are.

I’m not just talking about the bog standard steps either. I mean EVERY STEP.

Too many sales people go through a "slump" where their number of closed sales are not what they should be. So what do they do? Well, they start to muck about with their presentation and how they close and they tinker with little things here and there.

The bottom line is that they do not know where the problem is so they guess. Well, with a well thought out sales process, one which you can measure, these bottlenecks can easily be identified.

For example, the problem might not be in the sales presentation at all - that ratio might be just has high as normal. The problem might not be the number of prospects in the pipeline either. The problem might not be with the number of appointments set too.

"So where is the bloomin problem?" I hear you cry.

Well the problem might have been that your decision makers were cancelling the appointments that you had set with them and because you were so busy busy busy, something like that could have gone un-noticed. So many "lost sales" fall under the radar.

So on  the face of it your appointment setting ratios are still the same, your closing ratios are still the same yet your number of actual closed deals is falling.

Something like unfulfilled appointments can slip through the net undetected. They might go unrecorded for example.

So what would this mean?

Well, it might mean that you are selling too hard in your cold calls. By this I mean that the prospect agrees to a meeting just to get you off the phone and then cancels later on.

You need to understand every step of your sales process not matter how small or trivial and then you need to measure that step.

Something trivial looking like just improving the number of returned calls you get when leaving voice messages can make you an additional 5-10 sales per year just by changing the message you leave everything else being equal.

What you need to do next is:

• Go somewhere quiet and map out your end to end sales process in as much detail as you can - leave nothing out!
• Take steps to measure the numbers and ratios at each stage
• Consistently review your figures at each stage so you know what’s working and what isn’t

Happy Selling! (and measuring!)

Sean

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling

Telephone: 0800 849 6732