by Anneli Thomson, Managing Director, May 2014
You can’t manage what you can’t control!
You can’t manage the number of sales you’re going to make but you can manage the behaviour that will help you make those sales. Obviously you can’t predict who will buy and who won’t because only the prospect knows if they really want you’re selling, if they have the budget and if they can make the decision to move forward. Those are all things outside of our control.
What is in our control is strategically developing a plan based on the number of calls we need to make, crafting questions that qualify the prospect for need, budget and decision as well as disqualifying those prospects who won’t or aren’t ready to move forward.
Sometimes salespeople will let persistence stall their sales development. It can often keep us from disqualifying the prospect. It may be that this is the wrong timing for the prospect. We need to ask the questions and uncover if there is a better time to approach the topic. That’s a good use of persistence but persistence is of no use if the prospect is not fully engaged in the agreement to regroup at another time.
Controlling your behaviour is about doing the things that will result in gaining business. It’s about taking control of where and with whom you spend your time. It’s about developing a plan and following it. It’s about being part of your plan rather than somebody else’s plan.
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