Colleen’s Blog

If you’re doing research about your industry, your market and your competition...well done! Successful salespeople always make moves based on facts, not assumptions. However, if you’re not tracking yourself on a regular basis, you may be omitting your most important pieces of data. ← Click To Tweet When it comes to prospecting, it’s important to set a goal. But, you must also track your progress towards achieving that goal. If you’re not collecting your own prospecting data, you risk falling behind and reaching a point in the year where you can no longer recover for lost time. That's why I strongly suggest measuring the success of your prospecting activities each month. The objective is to ensure that your efforts add enough prospects to the top end of your sales funnels so you can achieve your sales goals. After reviewing your progress, take one of the two following steps:

Instructive new research from Software Advice a sales software comparison website about the likelihood of prospects answering unknown calls vs. local calls vs. toll free. "The idea is that people are more apt to answer a call from an unknown number if that call appears to be coming from a local number: this gets the caller’s “foot in the door.” But is answering enough? Does local presence dialing really open doors for outbound-sales calls, or does it only slam them shut?" The results clearly show that people are more apt to answer a local call than one coming in from a toll free number. Now...before you all rush out to try call ID spoofing (a practice where you fake a local call when you are not local) let's analyze what we are really seeing in this survey.

Are you frequently setting goals? When a plane takes off, the pilot knows all sorts of specifications so the destination can be reached. The exact coordinates of the destination, the amount of time it will take to get there, and other details are confirmed before takeoff to ensure the safe and timely arrival of the flight. A similar process is required for successful goal setting. You must set goals that are detailed, time specific and achievable in your mind in order to create success. ← Click To Tweet The following are example goals that are more likely to generate positive results: - “Increase written and oral communication skills by attending 5 seminars or workshops by December 31st, 2014.” - “Double next month’s sales results by prospecting for an extra hour each day.” - “Make 20 new professional connections before December 31st, 2014 by attending 10 networking events or gatherings by the end of the year.” Notice how each goal has a well-defined result, a time frame and a general “plan of action” to achieve it. Not only can these goals be easily measured and executed, but they are reasonably realistic while still maintaining a respectable “reward” for putting in the work. Let’s compare these with the types of goals that most salespeople set:

As you know, organization is simply one of those “must-have” skills that a salesperson must possess in order to be successful. Let’s make a distinction - being organized in sales doesn’t mean having a spotless office with perfect stacks of paper and a strategically placed hand sanitizer beside your computer. Being organized means having one contact management system that you use every day to manage all client files, your complete calendar, your tasks and all the information you need to prepare for each sales call. You must get yourself organized with a true sales force automation system such as InfusionSoft, Landslide, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM or OnContact because they become your sales dashboard.  While I’m not endorsing any of the aforementioned systems, I do highly recommend using a proven CRM system to help with your day-to-day activities.