Make Sales Your Critical Focus! Here’s How

There are a small handful of areas that require your critical focus right now – make sure you’ve got this one on lock.

One of the most exciting, and frustrating things about being in business is the fact that nothing is certain. And while the last few years have been a lesson in adapting to a rapidly changing business environment – it has not necessarily equipped us for what is required this year.

In our view there are less than a handful of areas that require your critical focus right now – and sales is absolutely one of those. You might have already been experiencing sleepless nights when thinking about your future sales pipeline, or maybe you are choosing avoidance…

However, if you have started to notice that maybe the phone isn’t ringing like it was a few months ago, if maybe those leads are taking longer to convert to sales, or if you are losing work to a suddenly very cheaply priced competitor, then this is for you! Having spent more than 15 years in sales and business development myself, as well as working with sales teams on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis at the moment, here are some of my Top Tips for Sales right now:

1. Know your numbers but don’t get lost in the weeds

The ability to have visibility over your numbers is critical. Whether this be leads in, quotes out, confirmed or invoiced sales… the key numbers can look different depending on your business or your team. Sometimes we can run the risk of data fatigue though – and this can result in over‑reporting, and under‑analysis. It’s important to cut through the clutter at the moment and focus only on the most important metrics on a daily basis.

Your actions?

• Review your key metric reporting. Are we tracking the MIT (most important things)?
• Does the data help us identify where to spend our time, and what is critical right now?
• If you aren’t reporting on anything, then START! If you aren’t sure what metrics you should be looking at, call us!

2. Avoid distraction, get comfortable with uncomfortable

There is a wonderful quote about distraction: “You can always find a distraction if you are looking for one” – Tom Kite.

Sales behaviour right now is uncomfortable! There are a lot of declines and delays. It’s harder to get a lead, harder to get a sale, and objections are plentiful! At the end of the day, none of this matters (see #3 Top Tip). The thing is, when something is uncomfortable and awkward, it is so much easier to sink our time into distractions. If I had a $5 note for the number of times I have heard the words “Oh I just got busy with other things, I didn’t get to it”, then I could safely purchase a holiday home in Queenstown! The point is – right now is the time to get down comfortable with the uncomfortable in sales. Put aside the distractions and get disciplined.

Your actions?

• Block out time – dedicate a certain part of your day for the most critical actions only and use that time for those things.
• Be disciplined about the use of your time – challenge yourself and your colleagues. Is this the best use of my time right now? What should I be spending my time on?
• Get your most uncomfortable action items done first thing. Don’t procrastinate.
• Use your colleagues to hold yourself to account.
• Use the resource around you more effectively – are there others in your business who could be helping you with some of your sales activities or your distractions?

3. It’s time to hustle! Develop and appetite

Now is not the time for paper shuffling, or warming seats. If you are personally responsible for sales in any way, then it’s time to hustle, it’s time to get hungry. Your competition will be doing one of two things: they will either be pulling back and potentially even reducing their direct approach to market OR their salespeople will be getting hungrier. If your appetite and hustle doesn’t match theirs you are going to fall behind. If you are in a market where your competition are perhaps pulling back a little, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy – it’s still going to be challenging, but the strides you take now will mean that the opportunity to come will be that much larger.

Your actions?

• Increase your sales calls or visit targets.
• Set a short, sharp sales sprint for your team (or yourself). Park all other activities for a period of time and focus solely on sales behaviors.
• Whiteboard reset – grab 1 hour with some great minds (not just yours) and do some crazy idea thinking. Identify crazy markets or customer or opportunities. No idea is a bad idea. What could you tap into that you haven’t before? Get it all out, and then choose at least 3 to take some action on. If those don’t work, then go to the next 3.
• Try and have a bit of fun. I know that this can be an incredibly stressful time. The long and the short of it, is that people want to do business with people who make them feel good. So don’t get desperate, don’t get sucked into talking about the negative things going on in the world. Talk about the good, talk about the opportunity, talk about how great your product is, be a solution finder, a connector. Leave people feeling GREAT. They will do business with you.

If you are really struggling to see the forest for the trees right now in sales, then please get in touch. Our team can help you identify your key metrics, challenge your sales process, link you with funding and partners that could help your lead generation, or simply have a courageous conversation with you about where your focus is.