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A huge time waster that most good sales people commit…

By Chris Peterson| Jun 27, 2019 8:50:00 AM | 0 Comments

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When I was a VP of Sales, I had an extremely hard working Regional Sales Manager covering the Western United States.  I don’t know if this guy ever stopped working.  While his counterparts were in front of six to eight customers a week, he would have that many appointments in a day sometimes.  Whenever I rode in the field with him, I had to go into training for a couple weeks ahead of time – he was a machine.  However, his sales numbers weren’t great.  They were good – he always met his quota – but they weren’t nearly in the same league as his activity. 

My boss claimed: “He’s not a closer.”  That wasn’t it.  He would establish next steps on every opportunity and move the sales through the cycle.  There was another problem, and I was determined to find it. 

After working with him for several months, I realized his problem: he treated every prospect the same.  If there was a roof and someone under it with a heartbeat, he would try to uncover a sales opportunity.  His favorite phrase was: “… you never know.”  That’s when I developed one of my favorite statements: “If you’re a professional, you should know.”  The result was that he just didn’t have the time to find the prospects and customers that were good fits for our business.  It wasn’t that he didn’t qualify, he didn’t even know what our ideal customer looked like and wasn’t able to qualify – which was my fault. 

One of the most common time wasters practiced by good sale people is chasing accounts that are not good fits for their offering.  Notice that I used the adjective “good”.  Poor performers usually don’t hustle enough to be able to claim this problem.

Solution: Define your ideal client.  This description should not be restricted to vertical market or company size.  This exercise should be taken to the finest detail.  Once you have this description, then you can loosen it a little bit to identify the right prospects.  After all, you won’t find many ideal clients out there, but it’s the best place to start.  Once you have the ideal client defined, everything else becomes clear – who to pursue, who not to pursue, benefits you have that fit their needs, etc.  Once you know who to pursue, the world will open and you will no longer be wasting time with accounts that ultimately won’t buy from you. 

 

 

 

 

 

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