50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #5 – Is the Money Real?

November 24, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #5 – Is the Money Real?

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let’s look at Habit #5 – Is the Money Real?

Know which opportunities are funded and when the money will be spent.

Salespeople work with a wide variety of opportunities and at any one time could have literally hundreds of quotations in their portfolio.  How do they manage the sheer number and determine where to spend their time?

In last month’s Newsletter, it was stated that a salesperson should spend their time on D opportunities.  Well, that assumes a perfect world and the world is not perfect.  So if a sales person cannot spent all their time on D’s, where should time be invested?  In the real world, time should be spent turning A’s to B’s and B’s to C’s and C’s to D’s and closing D’s.

That’s the real world.

But how does a salesperson know which D’s to go after first?  That will depend on which one has the funds available first.  By knowing which projects are funded, which is the basic definition of a D, then it is a matter of knowing which one is going to have funding available first.

Top Performers know the funding status of all their D projects on a daily basis.  It’s part of the Sales Cycle interrogatory (questions that a salesperson asks perspective customers).  This process goes something like this:

• Has this project been approved by management for purchase?
• If so, when will the funds be available to make this purchase?
• If not, when will it be approved and when will the funds be available?

These are key questions for which a salesperson must have answers, on a daily basis, to know where to invest their time.

It is not enough to know that an opportunity is a D.  A salesperson must know when the funds are going to be available and when they’re going to be spent.  These are two distinctly different events.  “Funds being available” does not mean the funds will be spent as soon as they are available and the salesperson must know the difference.  They must know WHEN the funds will be spent, to the minute, so they can be there to get the order!  This is all part of professional Sales Cycle management.  Again, the most critical resource they have is their time and if they have to generate $2,400 an hour in sales revenue then they darn well better focus their time on those projects that are most likely to close.

It’s not real money until the order is placed, the product or service is delivered, the customer is satisfied and the invoice is paid.

“A Habit” is not work but just a thing that is done every day and knowing which opportunities are funded and when the money will be spent can easily become a Habit.  Classify opportunities, plan time to work the right opportunities at the right time and close the sale.

TIME MANAGEMENT. For Top Performers every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results.  Top performers have a methodology to classify their opportunities to focus their efforts and maximize the utilization of their time with and on their customers.  Top Performers plan and then engage.  They act on their plans, they work hard and they get results.

Coaching these skills is a critical part of what we do.  We are here to help you develop and implement your Strategic Plan and coach and develop the skills to implement the plan successfully.

We are having great success coaching and implementing these methods and skills and our clients love it!