If you’re a B2B sales professional, then one thing you’ve had tattooed in your head is getting results. Bend the ear of almost any sales leader and they will tell you that senior management is omni-focused on results, results, results.
It’s all about the results, isn’t it? At the end of the day, the company with the best results wins, and the employee with the best results gets the bonus, or the promotion. Month end, quarter end and year end are forever dominated with closing deals with little focus on anything else. So, what’s wrong with that?
Results are an outcome. They are the outcome of a process, of steps that have been followed to achieve an end. In too many organizations the hyper-focus on outcome comes without much consideration of the process necessary to get there. If you’re results-centric, you spend all your time dwelling on “finding that next deal”, looking to how you can close a client now. Your focus is entirely trained on the back end of your pipeline.
Let’s say your target for a year is $100,000 in sales from new clients. Where will it come from? Break it down so that your focus is on process instead of the $100,000.
If your average deal with a new client is $10,000 you’ll need to close 10 deals in the coming year to reach your objective. Since not every opportunity to close a piece of new business will succeed, figure out how many opportunities you’ll need to be working on to close those 10 deals.
For sake of argument, we’ll assume that half of your opportunities will turn into new business. That means you need to be pursuing 20 opportunities.
How many meetings with new clients do you need to attend to discover 20 opportunities? If 1 in 5 meetings reveal a potential piece of business, you will need to attend 100 meetings.
How many phone calls, emails or other types of reaching out to people will you need to complete to generate 100 meetings and when will you do it?
Results are destinations, process is the journey. You have much better odds of reaching your destination if you’ve planned the journey.
What’s your sales process?