Focus in growing sales and revenues is challenging for many small business owners and entrepreneurs, let alone actual sales professionals. It takes amazing, ongoing focus on the activities that lead to new revenues in order to grow business and ultimately thrive as a company.
Here are 3 ideas you can implement to help you stay on course.
1. MONDAY MORNING CHECKLIST – create a list, through a sort of your prospect data, to see who you need to talk with this week. Since you have prospect details in some sort of a web-based system, with next actions set, it should not be an issue to pull up a list of items to do, which will lead you to more revenues.
WHAT? You don’t have a cloud-based CRM system? Where have you been?
CRM systems really started getting helpful for smaller businesses in the late 1990’s and early 2000. That means over the last 12 years, amazing tools and capabilities have surfaced – especially with the advent of low-cost cloud computing – to help you track sales opportunities, prospective customers, and actual customer information. To get started with this (finally?) take a look at:
Salesforce.com – the industry standard with lots of capabilities
Nimble - what we use excellent Social CRM
Batchbook – works great with Google Apps and MailChimp
Landslide – a quick and robust solution
2. DAILY PROSPECTING TIME – If you are in growth mode for sales, you need to set time every day to prospect for new business. Mark this time right in your calendar so that you’re not deterred by common distractors like reading all of your email or surfing the web (even if you call it research). Block time everyday and honor that time to call prospective customers and to email as necessary with the intention of moving sales opportunities forward. You've GOT to do this! We have clients who do prospecting first, THEN have their first coffee of the day. Drastic? Maybe, but it gets the job done.
3. MAKE A SALES HIT LIST – Yep, a "hit list". Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with. This list is based on who would make a more-probable (rather than less-probable) prospective customer and who you’ve determined is the type of client you’d like to work with. For us, we look for companies that are known for being industry leaders and companies with great reputations – top tier in how they treat their own customers and their employees, with great leadership. On your list, choose some real “stretch” goal companies – ones you may think today that you have no chance at, because as you hone your presentation and value proposition, you can get closer to these dream clients. Put the list on a wall in your office or cube – look at it every day. Which company can you call on this week?
By implementing these three, simple ideas, you can help keep focus on revenue development and less on the internal issues we tend to get totally bogged down with.
What’s your strategy? Post your idea in comments – it may be the one thing that helps someone else.
Lori Richardson is The Sales Detective of Score More Sales. She coaches and trains salespeople to grow revenues, and speaks to sales teams about simple ideas that build business. Follow her at @scoremoresales