It’s summer time and the living is easy. Maybe it is if you are on track to make your sales goals this year. What if you’re not? Here are some actions to take to get more sales and make your sales goals this year.
Focus on smaller accounts.
I don’t normally recommend focusing on smaller accounts. Why? Because you work just about as hard on a smaller account as you do on a larger one. Notice, I didn’t say small. I said smaller. You don’t have time to work on small accounts.
What about the medium-sized ones? They’re smaller than the huge accounts you may be trying to sell. These smaller accounts often have fewer decision makers to voice their support or not give it. They also have managers with greater authority who can make decisions on their own. All this saves you time. It will take you less time to close business. Remember, a few smaller accounts equals one large customer. You can still make your sales goals with a few smaller accounts.
One more point to consider if you have just a few large customers and no mid-sized customers. You’re vulnerable with your business made up of just a few huge accounts. Lose one and it really impacts your business.
Review your strategy.
Look at all the prospects you have on your prospecting list. Now compare each to your ideal prospect. You have described in detail who your ideal prospect is, haven’t you? If not, now is the time. Identify the characteristics of those customers who are most likely to buy from you. It may be a characteristic like location, revenue, size, type of business, years in business or other variable of your choosing. Be as specific as you can when you describe your ideal customer.
Now compare each prospect that you are working to sell with each characteristic of your ideal prospect. How far are you from your ideal customer? From this point until you make your sales goals this year, focus on those accounts who are closest to your ideal customer. You’ve got to make sales. You don’t have time to waste on prospects who are less likely to buy. It’s only logical that the prospects who are most like your ideal customers are the ones which you will have the highest probability of sales success.
Fix what’s broken.
There’s a saying that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If you’re not making your sales goals, then something is in fact broken. It’s time to get it fixed now! Here’s how you can tell where you need to focus your repair efforts. Your sales process is working if your telephone calls are getting you meetings. Work on changing your telephone script to a more compelling message with better questions if your telephone calls aren’t getting you meetings.
You’re doing fine if your sales meeting appointments result in sales presentations to decision makers. You should work on uncovering needs, quantify the cost of doing nothing (not buying), or identify decision makers better if your presentations aren’t resulting in closes. All too often presentations that don’t get sales missed uncovering a customer’s compelling need. A generic presentation that doesn’t highlight specific customer needs often gets an, “I’ll think about it.” You do know that thinking about it really means no, right?
You still have time to turn a bad year into a good one. Taking the summer off isn’t the way to do it. The writer Jenny Han says, “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” That’s true especially if you turn your sales around.