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 their hands on the information in seconds?  Most salespeople cannot and that is a problem.

If they do not know the answers to these questions, they really do not know the status of “their business”.  Sales, after all, is the most important function of the business.  Without sales, nothing else counts.  Without sales, there’s no need for all the other departments of the business.  So if the salespeople do not know what their sales total was the previous month, they do not have a handle on “their business”.  It’s critical to understand the current status of their sales versus their quotas on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.

Every salesperson is in fact, running their own business.  They are hired by the company to produce revenue dollars by selling their products or services.  It is only reasonable to expect that they would know how well they are doing at running their business.  In other words, it is the expectation of the company that the salespeople know their own score.  Knowing their score is like the business owner knowing their financial statements.  It is strategic that they know their score just as it is strategic that the business owner knows and completely understands their profit and loss statement and their balance sheet.

To be able to manage their score, it is necessary to have a written plan that addresses the amount of business that will be produced selling each specific company, product or service.  This written plan is in fact their business plan.  It is written to support their quota.  Without this kind of planning, producing sales sufficient to meet a quota is simply wishful thinking.  Top Performers have a written plan for each customer/prospect and for each company product or service that supports their quota and many times supports more than their quota.

As a salesperson, they are hired to sell.  It is the expectation of their employer that they will sell and sell at a level to justify having them on the team.  That level is called a quota.  We think it is reasonable to expect that they would know exactly where they stand in regards to their quota on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.  It is also reasonable to expect that each salesperson knows where they stand in relationship to the other salespeople on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.

“A Habit” is not work but just a thing that is done every day and knowing what has been sold on a daily, monthly and yearly basis can easily become a Habit.  Set the quota, write the sales plan to meet the quota, work the plan and track the results.

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!