If I asked you what has changed in the last year with regard to your sales process, what would you say?
I like asking this question when I meet with salespeople and I’m amazed at the number of people who say they can’t think of anything that’s changed. Too bad because your customers have changed.
If your customers have changed, how do you expect to be successful if you haven’t changed too?
I’ll go one step farther and say it’s not good enough to change just at the pace as your customers are changing. You actually have to be changing faster than them if you want to get ahead of your customers.
What I’m talking about is the need to continually challenge what you do. One of the best ways to do this is by assessing each part of your sales process from the types of questions you ask to the types of closing techniques you use.
After each call you make, take a moment to review what you did, and at that time identify one thing you did well and one thing you could have done better. The objective is to use each sales call as a learning tool to help you get in the groove of a continual evolution of how you sell.
Too many salespeople are quick to brush off the last call and merely focus 100% on the next call.
Yes, this is certainly the approach to keep yourself focused on not allowing one item you may not have liked from impacting the next. But don’t do this until you’ve had the opportunity to first assess the call you just completed.
When you assess your call, take what you did well and celebrate it, and then look for ways to repeat the success on subsequent calls. For the items you may not have been happy with, take a moment to determine how you might change it.
Objective is to learn from each call.
To help you grow even more, be sure to sign up for the Monday Video series I’ll begin in January.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
