It is that time of year in North America where it becomes very easy to forget our sales priorities and get interested in booking flights, talking with relatives, planning meet-ups with friends, getting your boat or cabin or camp set up – and looking into some summer fun.
You say to yourself that none of this will distract you – but it does. You don’t plan for that to happen and you have the best of intentions.
Yet we write about this almost every year – here are some past thoughts on selling in the summertime :
- How to Address a B2B Summer Sales Slump - HubSpot blog
- Summer Sales Challenge for B2B Sellers
- 5 Ways to Grow Your Sales Pipeline this Summer
- Summer B2B Sales Challenge Revisited
Now is the time that you can plan how you will stick to accomplishing what needs to be done from now until the Labor Day weekend ushers in the end of the season.
Here are our top ideas on how to be successful accomplishing more this season rather than less.
Plan More, React Less this Season
Get your calendar out now and block out everything social you need to be involved in – so this means not everything you are invited to, but everything you NEED or really want to participate in. Depending on your age, you may be invited to lots of weddings – but you’ll attend some or most of them. Determine now, way in advance, what your plan is so that you won’t be reactive.
Work in Focused Time Blocks
Imagine that suddenly you have one hour less per day to get things done. What would you do? Amazingly most people will focus better and waste less time to accomplish more. To do that, block out times in your calendar for prospecting, and for research, clients, and for dealing with email/paperwork. Honor those time slots – get your work done.
Make Way for Fun
If you are a sales leader you don’t want to read about me telling reps to have fun – I understand, however – I always worked to have an enjoyable day each day as a rep. I like contests and I like to change things up – so I found teams to work for where I could have fun – we did hit a gong (at one of the companies), we did have contests and old fashioned leader boards – and I got to mix it up instead of doing the very same thing over and over and over. Selling in a front line role is a tough job to do day in and day out, so you must find ways to not only make it tolerable, but pleasant and dare I say enjoyable?
Learn Something
The summer months are a great time to learn specific skills or get certifications to help you grow professionally. Set a goal to learn specific things and find ways to make that happen. If you want to do a group activity, how about scheduling a summer sales book club? Not everyone on your team will read a book you give them to read, but when it comes time to discuss, just like any book club, those who didn’t read the book will still gain ideas and they may be moved to actually read the books once they hear more about them. Books I suggest for a team are:
Agile Selling - by Jill Konrath
Insight Selling - by Mike Schultz and John Doerr
We will post more ideas once the days start getting sunnier and hotter. For now, get your plans in order and breeze through the months notorious for distraction.
Lori Richardson is recognized on Forbes as one of the "Top 30 Social Sales Influencers" worldwide and is a Top 25 Innovative Sales Blogger. Lori speaks, writes, trains, and consults with inside sales teams in mid-sized companies. Subscribe to the award-winning blog for sales strategies, tactics, and tips.
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