Juggling priorities

By Michael Caron   

Most executives would say if there is one area of their life where there is a serious time and priority mismatch, it would with their family. Most executives are a living contradiction in that, while surveys show that family is generally their number one priority, it is rarely ranks number one in volume of time or in planning of commitments.

Why? Usually it’s because people have gotten into the habit of letting work related “urgent” activities bump family time off the agenda. Your son or daughter isn’t going to send you an e-mail or a text message firmly stating that they want to have dinner with you or go play in the park.

Turning your priorities into action starts with having a clear set of goals that reflect your values and emphasizes all the different areas of your life such as family, career, financial, health, social, spiritual and recreational. Think of these areas as being the spokes in a wheel with you at the centre. If one of more spokes are broken, the wheel doesn’t turn smoothly. If enough spokes are missing or broken, the wheel doesn’t move at all.

Here are some ways to get control of your life:

Set some goals: Ironically, the number one reason people don’t set goals is that they are afraid of failing to reach them. This flies in the face of reams of research indicating that having goals ALWAYS achieves better results than without! Goal setting must be accompanied by a realistic yet challenging execution plan. Start with your life goals, then break that down into yearly goals, monthly goals.

Plan your time to match: Plan your week in advance. Each week, I pull out my month’s goals and ask myself, “What can I do this week to help drive me closer to my goals?” I break my monthly goals into smaller “bite-size” chunks and then plug them as to-do’s into a specific day. A goal without a plan is just a dream.

Categorize your actions: Goals and time management are inextricably linked. Effective time management is actually just goal setting in a short time frame. Take your tasks and mark them as A’s or B’s. A’s are things that must get done in the time frame that you’re planning for (i.e. day, week or month) while B’s can wait if necessary. Note: They are both important. The A/B distinction is only for urgency. If something’s not important, why are you spending any time on it anyway?

Do it again! At the end of day, note how you did and plan for the next day. If you would like to learn more check out our Goal Aligned Time™ program.

Leverage your team to help boost your sales

By Michael Caron   

Don’t forget that you have a wealth of knowledge and support all around you in the form of colleagues and management. Consider enlisting their support in these ways . . .

(1) Make them into a prospect Ask them to pretend that they are a prospect and give you honest feedback on your skills. Of course, before you do this, you need to be willing to listen and take constructive criticism. Send them your typical e-mail, leave them your typical voicemail, do a customer sales meeting with them.

Sure, it’s uncomfortable “acting” in front of your peers but where do you want to make your mistakes? In front of your friends where they can give you valuable feedback or in the field where prospects are far less kind and where it can cost you thousands?

(2) Take turns riding shotgun Ask a coworker to go along on a sales call with you. (If you ask your manager to go with you rather than waiting for them to ask you, just think of how much of a keener you’ll look!)

I’ve never seen someone ride shotgun where they haven’t noticed something the salesperson hadn’t.

Voicemail doesn't have to mean voice-snail

By Michael Caron   

Are you frustrated constantly by trying to connect to prospects and getting their voicemail? I hear this complaint from many of our clients.

Times have changed. In the early 90’s before voicemail was ubiquitous, studies showed that one business person attempting to contact another business person would get through 22% of the time. Sounds low doesn’t it? But it gets worse. Today’s stats are more like 10%! That means that 9 out of 10 times, you’re going to get voicemail.

Instead of looking at this marvel of communication engineering as being your enemy, it can be your friend - at least in the short term. Before you say I’ve lost my selling marbles, let me explain. How many of you can convey a compelling description of your product’s benefits and features in 30 words or less. Some of you may be able but wouldn’t it be nice if you had 2 full minutes? Of course it would.

Well, that’s the difference between getting a prospect on the phone right off the bat and being able to leave a voicemail message. I far prefer to leave a carefully crafted, practiced, voicemail message as my first voice contact with a prospective customer. You can’t get cut off, you can build some “personality” and trust and with many systems, you also have the added benefit of erasing it and doing it again if you screw up. Be careful to leave the message as best you possibly can and finish before trying to erase it though in case you can’t!

Obviously you eventually want to connect in real time with the prospect and there are specific techniques to drastically increase your chances when the time is right but that will have to wait for a future issue!

Using voicemail to your advantage is part of Northbound’s Customer-Centric Selling program.

Ask Doctor Sales

Dear Doctor Sales,
     I have a problem. I’m calling lots of prospects, doing lots of presentations, but can’t seem to keep everything organized. I spend half my day just going over my list to figure out what to do next. Can you help?
     Nancy P, Markham

Nancy: There are two parts to getting organized. The first is getting your organizational skills developed. The other is getting technology on your side. Let’s look at them separately:

Part One: Get a system set up. Categorize all your time and all your prospects. You should break the selling process in your specific organization into segments. For instance, you may have a category of “prospects who have been sent intro e-mail” and “prospects who I’m attempting to follow up with after intro e-mail” etc. In this way, you can clearly see what the required actions are for each category and it also allows you to filter out the “unlikely” time-wasting prospects more easily.

By the way, did you know that the average salesperson wastes 30 minutes per day simply looking for stuff on their own desk? That’s equal to three full work weeks a year! To help prevent this from happening to you, clear your desk and mark down in your agenda which category you are going to work on in a given block of time. This way, you won’t seem overwhelmed.

Part Two: Once you have a system set up, get a CRM product like Salesforce.com, ACT! or even Outlook and put every prospect and all actions taken in the system. Each time you “touch” a prospect by connecting with them by e-mail, phone or other means, ask yourself, “What’s the next step to take with this person?”. Once you’ve answered this, plug it into the date that you want to do it. This will cut down your future thinking time dramatically and give you a greater feeling of being in control. If you would like to learn more about managing your time, check out Northbound’s Goal Aligned Time™ program.

If you have a question for the Doctor, e-mail me at doctorsales@northboundlearning.com.

Questions are the answer

By Michael Caron   

In our business, we are often asked, “What is the biggest mistake salespeople make?” Of course, we tend to term them “opportunity areas” rather than “mistakes” but whatever you want to call them, the most common is the area of questioning. The second area that goes hand-in-hand with number one would be the seeming inability of typical sales professionals to quit talking and listen after they’ve asked great questions!

The average salesperson is high in the “D & I” of the DiSC personality assessment, which means that they are “dominant” and “influential." They like to control their environment and generally, they love to talk (to learn more about the DiSC profile, send us an e-mail for a sample). While these are critical personality traits for a sales professional to possess, they can also be their Achilles heel. In a meeting with the prospect, they think that selling is best done by being the one who talks the most. Their best definition of communication is “taking turns talking!”

The shortest course on selling is “ask questions and shut up”. Good use of open ended, closed and probing questions allows you to accurately determine your prospect’s priorities, challenges and needs. How can you truly provide a solution, which is an overused word in sales these days, without knowing precisely what the problems are and where the opportunities are? You should never go into a sales presentation without a list of well thought out questions. At Northbound, we’re hesitant to even use the term “presentation” as it implies that the salesperson is “presenting” while the prospect carefully listens while it should be just the opposite.

Our partners in e-learning solutions, CRK Interactive, recommend in a Customer Focused Sales Interview, that the prospect should be talking over two-thirds of the time. Of course, there is much more to learn about performing this process properly.

Northbound Learning’s Customer-Centric Selling™ program includes a solid skills building segment in this area. For more information, click here. To experience a free e-learning demonstration in this area from our partners, click here.