Day in and day out, sellers are inundated with sales tips, new technologies, and industry updates. It’s easy to get caught up in the newest trends and forget about the basics. Today, I’ve outlined five simple tasks that salespeople can perform to improve their daily efficiency and make them more effective.
- Clarify your vision or purpose.
All too often, sellers forget their ultimate mission to grow revenue, but you also need to be clear about your “why.” Whether this takes the form of recitation of a mission statement or a daily check-in with a coach or peer, it’s important to ensure that you understand and remember why you are where you are. Everyone is motivated differently, so this is certainly a personal exercise, but when conducted in a group, you can help hold one another accountable.
- Divide your vision into parts.
Once you’ve identified your purpose, it’s important to not attempt to tackle everything at once. Specify metrics you want to achieve and how to accomplish them. As you do perform this exercise, remember to “control your controllables,” and utilize metrics that you can manage. For example, you can control calls per day, appointments set, and referrals received, while metrics like total sales and reaches per day are more difficult to manage.
- Underpromise and over perform.
From all my years in sales, I know that delivering on your promises is a key to being successful. It’s no secret that relationship selling is the way of the present and the future, and to build long term relationships, you must follow through on your word, deadlines, and deliverables. It might be nice to draw up dramatic illustrations or present embellished evidence of what your product or service can do, but over the course of your career, over-promising will come back to haunt you. That goes for what you promise your sales manager, too. Be sure to stick to what you can accomplish in a realistic time frame so you’re overperforming instead of under delivering.
- Operate with a good attitude.
One of the best tips I was given as a young seller was “smile when you’re talking over the phone with a client or prospect.” At the time, I thought it was silly and didn’t start believing in it until I began to see the results. I couldn’t believe that something as small as smiling, standing up, and changing my tone over the phone could yield positive production. Once I started believing in that, I extended it to the other parts of my career as well. When you are fighting each task with a poor attitude, your day will drag and so will your productivity. Simply having a good attitude and working with a positive mentality will change your approach for the better.
- Spend your time on money-making activities.
Your time is too precious to spend it checking e-mails, on social media, and fraternizing around the water-cooler (do people still do that?). While you’re “on the clock,” make sure that you’re either seeing prospects or clients, or setting appointments to see prospects or clients. There will be time for you to plan for tomorrow, respond to messages, and catch up with friends later. During the workday, make sure that your main focus is on what you gets you paid like tracking down your prospects and moving the sales process forward.
None of the tips above are overly challenging, but they can have an immense impact on your day-to-day activities. By clarifying your vision or goals, spending time on tasks that matter, and underpromising and overdelivering, you will begin to become more efficient and more productive, increasing your overall performance.
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