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50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #7 – How Much Have You Sold?

January 26, 2015 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #7 – How Much Have You Sold?

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc. Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #7 - How Much Have You Sold: Know your quota and actual sales month to date, quarter to date and year to date. Know your order balance as it compares to your quota and have a written plan that outlines how any short fall in revenue will be produced by product and by customer/prospect.   Does your sales team know exactly what they sold last month?  Do they know the exact products or services and the dollar amount of each sale?  If not, can they put ...

50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #6: Predicting the Future

December 22, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #6: Predicting the Future

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc. Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #6: Predicting the Future: Know which opportunities are going to be funded, know when they are going to be funded and know this on a daily basis. Up to this point, discussion has focused on D's and the funding of D's.  Well, how do you turn C's into D's?  This takes as much focus and sometimes more focus than closing D's.  Knowing when opportunities are going to be approved for purchase by your customers'/prospects' management, while not as exciting as developing an approved opportunity, is nevertheless crucial information ...

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 ...

50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People Habit #4 – Which One’s More Important

October 27, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People Habit #4 – Which One’s More Important

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #4 - Which One's More Important:  Prioritize leads and active projects. How do you know which lead or quote or project is the most important?  It surprises us how many salespeople do not know the answer to this question.  We find it's because they have no methodology to classify quotes, leads, projects or inquiries.  Without this methodology it is impossible to answer the question.  So what is the methodology? There are many approaches.  All of the customer management system available today have a methodology for classifying sales opportunities.  The important question ...

50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #3 – The 90 Day Calendar

September 19, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #3 – The 90 Day Calendar

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #3 - The 90 Day Calendar: Plan a business and travel calendar 90 days in advance. Habit 3 takes time management to another level by taking the focus on time from Habits 1 and 2  and using it to plan the salespersons business and travel calendar 90 days into the future.  The goal is to provide focus to the salespersons schedule so they are doing the right thing at the right time to maximize their sales effort. Creating a 90 Day Calendar is one of the main things we do ...

50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #2 – The First Thing Each Day

September 18, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #2 – The First Thing Each Day

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let's look at Habit #2 - The First Thing Each Day: The first function of each day is to review a daily calendar and decide which tasks you will do and move tasks that will not be done that day to another day. Habit 1 is about task development to maximize time invested daily, weekly and monthly and Habit 2 continues the focus on time management by defining what tasks are done each day with the hours available.Sales people are typically aggressive in nature and often have large tasks lists that contain more "things" than ...

50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #1 – Time for Tasks

July 16, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #1 – Time for Tasks

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc. Starting with the twelve Organizational Skills, let's look at Habit 1 - Time for Tasks: Top Performers plan time each day to do specific tasks.  The day is divided into segments dedicated to tasks such as follows: follow-up calls, quoting, trip planning, calendar development, account plan development and other daily tasks. Time management is at the core of performance for Top Performers.  They understand how valuable their time is to themselves, their company and their customers.  As defined in our book, a salesperson selling $3 million a year working ten hour days has revenues of $1200 per hour ...

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