Sales is like an ATM. Let me tell you why. Last week, I was with a sales manager reviewing the quarterly numbers. What jumped out to me was the lack of deals to close in the final stage. The sales manager zeroed in on it and asked for my help in correcting the situation. Unfortunately, he could not answer the one question I asked him which was this, “how much time are your people devoting to prospecting?”
How can you expect to have deals to close if you don’t first spend time prospecting? Try making an ATM withdrawal when you don’t have any money in the account, and you can’t do it. If you want to take money out of an ATM, you have to put money into it first! You feed the ATM and it will give back to you. Sales is no different! It’s why this is the first rule of my 10 Rules of Prospecting. Watch my video to learn more about rule #1:
Is your sales ATM not producing enough for you? Your sales ATM is your sales pipeline and it comes down to one simple thing: no one is better equipped to put money (sales leads / prospects) into your sales ATM than you. Even if marketing gives you leads, it’s your job to qualify them and move them through.
Don’t blame me when your ATM is empty and then continue to tell me how you haven’t had time to put money into it. You fill your sales ATM when you prospect, and it starts with focusing on how you use your time. You can’t say you’ll prospect when you get everything else done, because trust me, you’ll never have everything else done.
The amount of time you need to commit to prospecting is a response to the number of deals you need to close and your closing ratio. Here’s the easiest way to look at it: compare your results to your quarterly goal. The benchmark I use is: “75% / 2x.” This means that if I am finishing at 75% of quota, then I need to spend “2x” or double the amount of time I am now prospecting. Don’t say that you don’t need to make a change. Start using this ratio as your benchmark.
The time you spend prospecting is the foundation you put in before building a house. The bigger the foundation, the bigger the house. Once the foundation is in and the house is going up, it is too late to say you want to build a bigger house. The time to decide that was when you were working on the foundation.
Your goal is simple: build as big of a foundation as possible. Doing so, you’ll be able to put more money into your ATM.
Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result
