If you stay in sales long enough, you realize that you cant fix low sales activity. This is as blunt as I can put it. Sales activities drive opportunities which lead to sales. If salespeople dont do the sales activities, the opportunities wont develop and sales wont appear. This is a predictable, yet simple equation. I believe it was Zig Ziglar who said, If you do the things you ought to do, when you ought to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do, when you want to do them. Last month I was reminded how some sales people try to bypass the sales activity with clever tactics, personality and networking. Sales can either be the hardest low paying job or the easiest high paying job there is. I also believe that success comes from the right mix of being smart about what is done and doing the right things. Managing Sales Contacts and Action Plans Waiting at the desk for the telephone to ring is not selling. Salespeople must be pro-active and make contact with prospects and customers. If you employ a sales system that records sales activity, the numbers and action plans will predict your sales growth. In sales, you need to know what the success metrics are. This requires an examination of your sales activity results and keeping track of the ratios of success. When a salesperson monitors the number of sales calls they make to the number of appointments they get, this is an important success ratio. Keeping this data will help anyone analyze the sales activity. When the success ratios drop, or rise, you can often remember what you changed and learn from this. Unfortunately, you cant discover the ratios, if you dont have the sales activity numbers. Accurate sales activity numbers are critical to sales activity analysis. If you change a sales script just a little, it might change the outcome of your activity results. This is important. Analysis of the Sales Activities One of the reasons salespeople dont like documenting sales activity is because they dont understand the value from the analysis. Additionally, if sales activity numbers are inaccurate, they dont help. The important metrics in managing sales is the success ratios of where success and failure is taking place. Correcting and improving these metrics is where a smart salesperson can further improve and become a star salesperson. |
