Sales Training Tip #277: Leverage Time Appropriately

Time has a price.  Know how to leverage it in both the sales process and the delivery.

Two items that I’ve found can drive more sales are the elements of time and risk. Time is a wonderful tool to leverage because when we accept the fact that companies don’t buy anything – they only invest, we can begin to put a cost on each day they fail to make a decision. Another way of putting it is that they can add profit to their bottom-line for making a decision faster. With the current focus on driving decisions that can impact a bottom-line in the current quarter, this makes that much more sense. When you’re calling on a prospect, make sure you know what their financial calendar is and how the calendar may either speed up or slow down the decision making process. Be prepared to alter your offering to fit it. Just as you want to maximize cash flow within your own business, many times by flexing your offering to fit their financial calendar, you can increase your overall profitability. If you practice this across all of your prospects, you’ll find you are able to increase your cash flow because for every customer you back things up for, there will be another customer that will want to accelerate the process.