If my objective is to go someplace and I don’t have a map, how will I know when I get there?
You’d be just as lost in prospecting without a plan. No need to get frustrated, great salespeople own it. They don’t create excuses.
Whether your plan is bad, or nonexistent, here are five easy steps to building one that works.
**This blog is part of the 15 Reasons Holding Salespeople Back series**
1. Don’t blame others.
Even if you don’t have a plan currently, that’s your job.
Don’t say, “Well, my boss hasn’t given me a plan.” No, that’s not your boss’s job. It’s your job.
You know what you need to do. You know that you need to get X amount of business. Then go get it.
2. Set small goals that you can achieve.
Let’s say your plan is to be earning at least a million dollars a year in one year. That’s probably not doable short-term, right? It’s not doable. However, if I set a plan that says I’m going to earn 50,000, 100,000, 150,000, 200,000, whatever it is, during the first year and next year, I make a goal to earn X. That’s how you do it.
I’m going to set small goals I can achieve to create momentum.
3. Build a simple plan and stay focused.
So many times I see salespeople overcomplicate things. As a result, they become held hostage by their own plan.
There’s a great book out called Checklist Manifesto, and it talks about how the best checklists just have three or four items. That’s it. Because if you get more than three or four items in there, nobody follows the checklist.
A simple prospecting plan is just three or four steps and it allows you to stay focused.
4. Rinse and repeat.
The best prospecting plans are ones that you just do over and over. They’re totally repetitive, which allows you to develop a routine, a system.
5. Think 3x your sales cycle.
Too many people build a plan, get into it for a week or two, and find it doesn’t work. Then they throw it out, as well as the next plan and the next one.
You don’t know if your plan is going to work or not unless you have executed it for at least three times the length of your average sales cycle. So if your average sales cycle is three months, you need to build your plan and not change it for nine months. You’ve got to get enough reps in to really see if it’s going to work.
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Copyright 2023, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.
