We all want to believe that we are the best at what we do. Unfortunately you don't get to decide that, your sales prospects and customers do! Having a lackadaisical selling effort is nothing to be proud of. Being lackadaisical simply means you show a lack of interest or spirit. If you have a bad case of it, you might appear to be indifferent, listless, and even languid. Salespeople who have a lackadaisical selling effort every day usually have one or more of these characteristics: 1. No written "To do" list. In sales, nothing will get you into more trouble than wandering around aimlessly throughout your selling day. To be organized you have to get organized which means having a prioritized and written list of things you want to do every day. Plain and simple. 2. No written script for making cold calls. Look, making cold calls to new sales prospects isn't easy and it usually isn't much fun. But if you're in sales, you have to get over it. One of your primary responsibilities as a sales representative is to secure new business. The reason most salespeople hate making cold calls is because they don't know how to do it the right way. The wrong way is to mumble and stumble throughout your telephone call. The right way is to prepare a script or buy a script that works like a charm for you. My good friend Art Sobczak has written several outstanding books on making sales calls to new prospects. If this is something you should be doing, you can stop being frustrated, and start being more effective using some of Art's sales techniques. Do yourself
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this link to get more information: http://bbp.infusionsoft.com/go/HSM/JM/ 3. No written sales call objectives for every sales call. This is a huge mistake. What makes it a huge mistake is that an overwhelming majority of all salespeople show up on the sales prospect's doorstep without any written sales call objectives. It takes less than two minutes for a street wise sales prospect to recognize another aimless and meaningless sales call - to average the Observer it's that obvious. As soon as you start preparing written sales call objectives for every sales call you'll immediately begin differentiating yourself from all the other salespeople who happen to call on your sales prospects. The best way to display a lackadaisical selling effort is to show up without written sales call objectives. Let me put it another way that may make more sense to you. You can either be the cream of the crap or cream of the crop. 4. No written strategic account plans. And don't let the word "strategic" scare you. There's a reason why commercial airline pilots file flight plans before every flight. There's also a reason why cruise ship captains, prepare in advance, navigational charts to guide them throughout the cruise. It doesn't matter where or how you write these plans. For all I care, you can write your plans on the back of an envelope. Just be sure you include what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and the timelines for everything. Now what's so complicated about that? RIGHT - nothing! 5. No written and/or prepared sales questions. Nothing will help you to find out what keeps your customers up late at night than good open-ended sales questions. Good sales questions will teach you everything you need to know about your sales prospects and customers. Good sales questions will pinpoint and amplify specific customer problems. Knowing these problems makes the rest of the sales process a whole lot easier. Good sales questions say a lot about you. Your questions show your interest. Your questions help build rapport and establish your credibility. It's been said you can tell the quality of the questions you're asking by the quality of the answers you're getting in response to your questions. 6. And finally - no hand written thank you notes. Don't let a day go by that you don't send hand written thank you notes. Most people live their lives in "e-mail." When you send hand written note cards you'll stand out. You can't delete a personal note. In fact it's been my experience, the people tend to hold on to the hand written note cards the get - because they get so few of them. As you can see, there's a common thread with all of these lackadaisical characteristics. And this common thread is a failure to put things in writing. It's such an easy thing to do and yet so many salespeople fail to do it. Why is that? Chalk
it up to a lackadaisical selling effort. Return from Lackadaisical Selling Effort to Sales Articles |
